n.n.november
I realized I lose my mind around the same time every year and came across a chalkboard that said
electoral violence femicide so I copied it into my notebook along with there is no chemical that is not
dynamic & i want to be/in more beautiful pain then this.
I went to a concert and when the lights came on they were orange. I almost turned
to the woman next to me and said did you know the color was named after the fruit, not
the other way around, but I didn’t and that’s also not what this is about, it’s just that I find
it funny how what I knew about the color orange spun in my head like the handle of a teacup
ride while I stood there trying to swallow sound
back into the throat or chest or wherever it fucking came from, and thought it’s okay because
the world is still gripped by nascent illness, there’s cloth over the part of my face that’s twisting
like it’s ready to split open and does, at the mouth, where I turn a plea into a repeated phrase
in the cool dark—thin, pulled taut, ready to fly apart, the body doesn’t work like a levy.
*
loveliness is not a noun
stand, just for a minute, under the falling
plums.
scan the branches
look for ones that will burst
not the ones that have already
not the corpses, not the yellow guts.
Naima Karczmar is a PhD student in English and Critical Theory and an MA candidate in Creative Writing. She serves on the editorial board for Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences and Ki, where she also works as managing editor. She has been a finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award and the Disquiet International Literary Prize in nonfiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Gramma Poetry, Autofocus and other people’s living rooms.