portion of the artwork for Imran Boe Khan's poetry

Imran Boe Khan’s Comments

Addiction is all over these poems. It’s a repeating topic in my writing—I’d say that at least half of my poems are about addiction. Particularly the impact of addiction on relationships. In the course of using writing to fill my head with rhythm rather than obsessions, I’ve become addicted to writing. It seems I’ve flitted from one addiction to another, with a great deal of cross-over. Looking back, as an 11-year-old kid with a food addiction, I queued up at the school cafeteria and ordered several cupcakes and hash browns before, half an hour later, repeating the process with a version of my father’s thick Indian accent. The Indian accent was part of a hammed-up foreign exchange character I used because we were only allowed to queue for food once a day at our school, and a school rule prohibited going over a certain budget. I lived a double life, with both lives indulging an addiction to cupcakes at their centre. Cupcakes stopped being such a big deal to me in my teens, but other addictions cropped up. Then, in 2011, I fell in love for the first time with something that wasn’t covered in pink frosting. Ever since then, my addictions have been constants in our relationship. These poems are about them.


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 54 | Fall/Winter 2019