Crow, Pirate, Fly / Hannah Silva

The child, above all, wants to be destroyed.

Before being born, asks pregnant:
How much pain are you willing to experience?

Pregnant already knows what it is to be
flogged, spanked, whipped & corporally punished.

I’ll show you how bad it can be, unborn child says.
Santa Claus doesn’t exist, pregnant replies,
Ouch! Are you stamping your little foot?

Crow, Pirate, Fly is a glitching manifesto of pain, pleasure, domination and submission. A power play of identities, authors, lovers and mothers, Hannah Silva’s long-awaited second collection is subversive and compelling, intimate and estranging, animal and alien. Ten years in gestation, this genre-queering text began as a cut up of Kathy Acker’s literary terrorism with E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, and now emerges as its own thing — dark, wild, innovative and pregnant with desire. There are no safe words.