There Were More of Us Below

By Hannan Khan

they mused that I poisoned the village after I flowered
my rhizomes had already invaded the tank—piercing through
cracks where frogs slept belly-up beneath the iron umami of noon
 
I guzzled what they forgot: shadi songs, fever names
the hush between a slap & absolution
 
by autumn everyone bore the same borrowed dream
a woman woke with the mud beneath her fingernails
and swore she’d expended the night planting teeth
 
a shopkeeper smooched his locked shutters every sunrise
because something inside kept respiring
 
children waved toward empty charpoys
and wondered why their other families never visited
they quit drawing water after the bucket returned warm
and humming but fucking thirst is a door that opens itself
 
soon they slumbered longer, gnawed less
listened for fields growing indoors
I listened too
 
beneath every house another village mustered
patient as seed
 
its people wore the beautiful faces above them badly
like waterlogged masks
 
when winter landed, the dream subsisted
when spring landed, the sleepers subsisted
when summer landed, the wells climbed out
of the ground and walked dear home
 
and the villagers watched
they had never been quaffing me
I had been quaffing them for years already
while their mouths rehearsed my name in sleep

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​Hannan Khan—a nefelibata, poet, fiction writer, editor, and scholar of literature & linguistics from Pakistan. He combs through moments of love, death, delirium, identity, and relational complexities. He is the winner of the Native Voices Award 2025 for his poetry collection Isn’t Cooked Is Cursed, and a finalist for the Rhysling Award 2026. He is longlisted for the erbacce-prize for Poetry 2026. His work has appeared in Evergreen Review, Fahmidan Journal, Strange Horizons, Gutter Magazine, IHRAM Literary Magazine, Liminal Lit, Twenty-two Twenty-eight, Abyss & Apex, Winds Of Asia, 4LPH4NUM3R1C, Uncanny Magazine, Native Voices II: The Cry of Creation, Full Bleed, and Cahava Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in Variety Pack, Spoon Knife, and Broad Ripple Review. Instagram: @hannan.khan.official