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  • Writer's pictureMarías at Sampaguitas

3 Poems by Karla Nemanic


Alma Cuerpo Masa

My mother says a soul

Can find its way into a body

At any given time

It can entrench itself in your masa

Like my mother’s hands

Palming a fat white egg

Cracking it open

With a thwack

Against the round lip

Of a shallow bowl

And the metal rings out

Clattering

Against the stone

Of the countertop

The wet plop

Of the yolk pooling

Before it leaves

The dough only slightly more yellow

When the dough rises

In the oven

My grandfather’s soul rises

In my blood

At five-ten

I am me

But at five-twenty

She says I have formed a wan crust

By six o’clock

The loaf is resting

Golden

On the cutting board

And the house is full

Of my scent



Paresthesia

To say I love you:

Love is a wisp of copper hair tucked behind a pierced ear,

Love is laying together in a twin-sized bed, tracing lines onto warm hands

And the purplish lips that brush a stain onto my cheek.


It is a wisp of copper hair tucked behind a pierced ear

That doesn’t hear me,

And purplish lips that brush a stain onto my cheek and

That tickle my arm when it is cold and


That don’t hear me

When I whisper I love you into your hair

That tickles my arm when it is cold

As you lie in my arms with enough weight to make me numb


And I whisper I love you into your hair

And you croak I love you back

As you lie in my arms with enough weight to make me numb

And I press the bleeding heart of my lips to your crinkled forehead


And you croak I love you.

It is my cold fingers lingering on one shoulder

As I press the bleeding heart of my lips to your crinkled forehead

And the numbing grip of a pink, manicured hand on mine.


It is my cold fingers lingering on one shoulder

While they cover you with my leather jacket,

And the numbing grip of a pink, manicured hand on mine

As you say I love you


While I cover you with my leather jacket

And sharp shivers run through me

As you say I love you

And I tug on your hand


And sharp shivers run through me

When my back presses against your warm stomach

And I tug on your hand,

Which is draped on the dip of my waist.


When my back presses against your warm stomach,

Love is laying together in a twin-sized bed, tracing lines onto a warm hand

Which is draped on the dip of my waist

To say I love you.



Aubade

I long for gauzy custard Morning to lift me

From my polyester bed into the warm cloud

Above the sky and blue nitrogen,

But that layer of the atmosphere

Is at least ten feet above my head. I jump

From underneath the duvet with a colorful print

The same as a drying field.

Flowers are molding in the streaked vase.

I smell lavender. Inhale, sweetly, exhale,

A gag on the patio. The Sun’s long long

Arms wrap around my skin ten times, and I

Picture myself the next night, dripping in shivering

Dark dark Dark, already longing

For the rays to lift me

Into drippy, custard morning.



Karla Renée Nemanic is a queer Latina whose passion is amplifying marginalized voices in literature. She is the poetry editor at Aristeia Anthology and a regular contributor at Rose Quartz Magazine. Her work has previously appeared in The Fem. When she’s not writing poetry or reading, she’s baking chocolate chip cookies and cuddling her black cat, P. B. Shelley.

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