Rumaisa Samir

Glossary:

pani puri - a South Asian street food, consisting of a hollow semolina or flour shell that is deep-fried, filled with chickpeas, diced potato, and onion, and served with tamarind chitney

pungi - a wind instrument used by snake charmers in the Indian Subcontinent

Rumaisa Maryam Samir was born and raised close to the sea in Karachi, Pakistan. She first discovered poems were fun at the age of eight, when she wrote one on her mother for a school assignment. Now twenty, she wishes she had more time to write in between juggling university, internships, and her penchant for procrastination. Rumaisa has been published in The Incandescent Review, Backwards Trajectory and Stirling Review, among others. Find her and more of her work @discardedfirstdrafts on Instagram.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

DEATH ANXIETY

cw: death, suicidal ideation, depression

torn lip i soak tissues in blood cups of yogurt sour on the floor

my mouth is sullen the sun is too bright for it

i haven’t seen my body or spoken to you in three weeks

when i talk to you it is an homage i swear it isn’t intentional

it’s just that you swallow life whole like pani puri smacking your lips on it

how do i explain to you beautiful creature that the world is ending?

how do i explain to you in your wonderful aliveness

that it will come for you too?

that in the end, it comes for us all-

the rot, the rot, the rot.

My therapist says loneliness is normal

so I’ve stopped taking my sessions. / Lahore is new to me, and the winter sunlight is piercing. / In the house my grandmother grew up in, there is a creased newspaper on a coffee table. / I drink chai with family I barely share blood with. / I try to catch the first flight home / and the first flight away from home. / Sometimes I wonder what love is. / The internet tells me it is a peeled orange. / I wonder if you’d peel an orange for me / sharp citrus tang coating our breaths / juice running down our fingers / prying seeds loose. / I wonder if anyone has ever loved my mother enough to peel an orange for her. / I tell myself I’ll catch the first flight home, do it myself. / The newspaper says the major arteries of my city are flooded. / Karachi never knows what to do with rain, an overwhelming mercy. / Someone refills my cup of chai. / I never know what to do with overwhelming mercy. / I always catch the first flight away from home. / I would ask you not to peel an orange for me. / I would invite you into the warm yellow light of the kitchen / give you oranges already peeled.

So Comes the Curtain Call

Sinewy dance- scales like cut emerald

and a lean, lithe streak of brown.

The mongoose charms the snake.

The pungi’s music pulses in their blood.

No one is a predator in the no-man’s land of empty bellies.

To hunt is to be hunted, so who are you calling callous?

No, this is a quicksilver trance,

a swaying of bristles and forked tongue in the air,

swollen with approaching night.

The brown grass quivers like an impatient crowd

gorged on the promise of heady violence.

Beady eyes liquefy with concentration. They keep time,

waiting for the first beat                                               

                                                dropped

to strike. The mongoose clamps his jaw on the hingeless head of the snake, who spasms

in the clammy clutch of death- a cord of twisted muscle wringing its soul out with its venom.

Blood scents the air, rising rich into the bloated evening.