we grade each and everything here

by Hannan Khan

(featured in the poetry collection "Isn't Cooked is Cursed," found within the anthology Native Voices II: The Cry of Creation)

Hannan Kahn’s poem "we grade each and everything here" is a stark critique of rigid education, cultural control, and silenced identity. Through haunting classroom imagery, the poem exposes the toll of perfectionism, gender norms, suppressed emotion, conformity, and institutionalized obedience.

good morning, children 

poise in line, don’t whisper, whisper in line, don’t stand out 

lace your shoes, tether your tongues 

don’t scream, don’t shout, don’t feel 

today we master: 

how to enumerate gpa while lusting the grave 

how to spell ‘perfection’ with a razor blade 

how to pass without passing out 

how to grin while perishing inside 

how to perish while grinning outside 

you’ll memorize: 

that a skirt one inch too high is a wickedness 

that a boy who cries is weak 

that love is grimy, crave is filth 

that textbooks matter but therapy doesn’t 

that silence is an obligatory subject and you better ace it 

Islamiyat: 

recite verses like bullets, don’t probe the trigger 

heaven is for the obedient 

girls? veil your vices in white 

don’t ask why Adam sinned—just don’t be Eve 

hell is ritual, hell is repetition, hell is you 

your gasp is weighed, your body? already guilty 

Urdu: 

we peruse Ghalib, but not fathom him 

pen essays on sacrifice while slicing your tongue 

poetry bleeds, but yours have to dry 

every amour slaughters in a funeral 

your metaphors and similes are censored, your utterances, sterilized 

Biology: 

we silhouette the body, a crime scene 

reproduction without pleasure, orgasm without cite 

we quote the penis, never tutor of want 

the clitoris? doesn’t nestle here 

hearts beat, but we only gauge pulse 

desire is dissected, not discussed 

today’s homework: 

script an essay on ‘my aim in life’ while 

suppressing your panic attacks 

ingrain formulas, forget yourself, 

lodge before 8 am, don’t lodge to your sadness 

assembly dismissed; now pray, pray to please, 

pray to pass, pray for slumber 

pray for muteness, pray to not rouse up tomorrow 

or worse—wake up the same 

postscript (not for marks): 

if you ever jot down a suicide note, make sure it’s grammatically 

neat and clean handwriting, proper punctuation 

we grade each and everything here 

even the end too

---

Hannan Khan was the grand prize winner of the Native Voices 2025 Award. Hannan is a nefelibata, poet, and scholar of literature & linguistics from Pakistan. He combs through moments of love, death, delirium & relational complexities, seraphically tracing what’s breathed and what flickers unbreathed. His pen grooves between haibun & heartbreak, ghazals & ghost games, intimacy & apocalypse. When he craves reprieve, he devours dark thrillers like he’s dissecting crime scenes — psychological, raw, unpredictable. He thrives on distorting the ordinary until it sings. Sips coffee, reads Manto & lets the world unravel. Featured in Failed Haiku, IHRAM Literary Magazine, SpecPoVerse & forthcoming in Graveside Press. Poetry is his altar; Fiction, his rebellion. He writes to unsettle, to unearth, to unlace.