Hauntings | Megan Ross | Poetry

by Submissions Editor

November 10, 2017

I dream
I am
a woman
in a bath,
holding a knife
to her throat.

The knife
opens her up,
and the head of
a cat emerges
from my face.

I dream
I am
a woman
in a lounge,
sitting where
her husband sits.

She puts the
cool blade
of a knife
to her arm,

presses,

waits,

an exquisite pause

—and then cuts,

hacking
hacking

while the neighbour looks on.

Neither say a word.

iii

I stand in third person,
watching my limb
fall to the floor,

soundless,

a stump in the
wilderness of a living room carpet,

some feral cat afraid of all this order.

I watch myself bleed,

and

stare at the arm,

as I might some child

I once tended.

About the Author:

Megan Ross is a writer, poet and journalist from the Eastern Cape in South Africa. She is the 2016 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award winner. Her short story, “Farang,” won the 2017 Brittle Paper Award for Fiction and was second runner-up for the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Award. She was runner-up for the National Arts Festival Short.Sharp Award. She has been shortlisted for the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship and longlisted for the Writivism Prize. Her writing has been featured in New Contrast, New Coin, The Kalahari Review, Aerodrome, Itch, and Prufrock. She has also written for the Mail and Guardian, Fairlady, Glamour, GQ and O, the Oprah Magazine. Her first book, a collection of poetry called Milk Fever, is forthcoming in 2018 from uHlanga.