Hannah Kezema is an artist who works across mediums. She is the author of the debut hybrid poetry collection, This Conversation Is Being Recorded (Game Over Books, 2023), and the chapbook, three (Tea and Tattered Pages, 2017). Her work appears in BOMB Magazine, Black Sun Lit, Grimoire, Full Stop, and other places. She is also the co-editor of Moving Parts Press’s broadside series of Latinx and Chicanx poetry in collaboration with Felicia Rice and Angel Dominguez.
THE REFERRAL
I remember what they say,
not a face
I scroll through the referral,
a beveled mirror of circumstance
searching for numbers, names,
and dates
fingering the where and the when
the who and the what part of the body
what part of the body or mind ails
who gets to tell the story
how many versions live in a story
how do we tread around each utterance
does what we already know
fit into the frame
or does it jut out
like an anguished teen
what’s between the details
the flesh, muscle, and bone
underneath the address and birthdate
the viral outbreak, the gas fire
did they survive it
could they
the witness is a fractal of the fact
a window in time
collect the angles and hinge
a narrative into being
polish the edges
clean
maybe
you see yourself again