Karisma Price

THINGS I SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF BUT AM NOT
after Erika L. Sánchez

The only woman I trust in New York is the pharmacist who hands me my Pristiq.

For the first time, I told Adam I loved him and meant it.

I like white male soul singers.

My father thought I’d marry a white man.

I don’t know any words to the Negro National Anthem.

I think death is nothing but a forgotten life.

Jazz funerals show me otherwise.

I did not cry at my father’s funeral.

I was God when I burned every ant with a magnifying glass.

I watch Addams Family Values until I’ve convinced myself Gomez Addams is my father.

I stole a toy beeper in front of a nun who complimented my name.

I’ve stopped trying to hide the fact that I did not cry at my father’s funeral.

I’ve never been on a date with someone I liked.

I have to check the stoves three times until I can fall asleep.

I do not check on my older brother because he never checks on me.

My pastor says depression is nothing more than a demon.

The congregation applauds until their palms bleed.

I go to church on communion Sundays to be a cannibal.

Karisma Price was born and raised in New Orleans, LA and holds a BA in creative writing from Columbia University. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at New York University where she is a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow. Her work has appeared in Four Way Review, Narrative Magazine, Wildness, Glass, Cotton Xenomorph, and elsewhere. Karisma lives in New York City and is a reader for Winter Tangerine. Along with Kwame Opoku-Duku III, she is a founding member of the Unbnd Collective.