‘POMEGRANATE’ & Assorted Poems
Anna Karakalou is a Illustrator, creative director and scenic artist. She have worked in the film industry for 20+ years. She currently teaches Illustration and Sequential Arts at VCU.
POMEGRANATE
I never knew I was a woman,
until I ate the pomegranate.
Five,
I pick my nose and burp at crows,
my legs are merriments of cartoon band-aid bruises,
my arms marked by bug bites and mud pie galore.
What are cooties?
Collecting frog bones,
a trophy of my morbid accomplishment.
Squishing ketchup packets to decorate my bare fries,
there was no such thing as time.
Ten,
I mastered air guitar solos, traded sillybandz,
wore monster pajamas under my uniform polo shirts,
wizard—vampire tournament during recess.
Please, friend, won’t you smile at me?
Distributing pizza slices on park benches,
the cheese oozes like Goosebumps slime.
Afternoons—
with long haired Patrick and brace face Abraham,
scraping our knees on concrete parking lots,
my skateboard fractured when I hit the ground.
I never knew I was a woman,
until I ate the pomegranate.
Fifteen,
I spent my time debating God as if he could hear me.
My body,
blossomed from spring to winter,
unconsenting.
I was not aware of the skin I housed;
the implications that arrived giftwrapped,
and expectations greeted by strangers.
You’re a young lady now, behave like one.
Banquet dinner, fertility fruit appetizers.
no meal can complement,
the snow mint toothpaste,
upon consuming a pomegranate.
Twenty,
Avoiding reflections in public bathroom;
a reminder that I do not belong.
Not on planet Venus nor planet Mars.
I sprinkled dandruff flakes of parmesan cheese,
on scrambled vermillion meatballs,
they cruised slowly on angel haired noodles.
Let's see how long I survive with one meal a day.
Becoming an enigma to myself,
I snort chunks of humanity,
until,
I can convince myself
that I am still a person.
I never knew I was a woman,
until I ate the pomegranate
BODY GIRL GHAZAL
What did mother say, eyes pensively grey, lightning bolt veins protruding,
through the corners of her wrinkled with age skin, “What happened to my little girl?”
As the music grew louder, hopscotch became powder, cracking carrot colored pill bottles,
Trading cheap beer for cigarettes, donating fist punches in mosh pit circles, violent girl.
When I shaved my hair, mother could not bear, then I bit my flesh torn fingernails, sneezed
waterfall spit above incandescent birthday flames, “That is not ladylike, you are a gross girl.”
At the clear faced mirror, exhibiting plaid boxer shorts, enveloping forest grown legs,
pulverize my chest in beige bandages, plum box bruises, flooding my ribcage, hurt girl.
I stand, between wasteland body and mental benzene plastic, corduroy skin- twist the gears, windup toy, marching to the thump of your heart, mother protests “You don’t look like a girl!”
You supposed that is true, as shades of indigo and verdant possess, the ardor of my precarious being, I— prescribed female at birth, have never been a girl.
GIRLHOOD
I sat there without my underwear,
I felt my white lace dress caressing the back of my thighs
and stayed on the seat dripping
Blood.
I thought that’s how girlhood was supposed to go.
You just give and give
Until your body is at the brink of collapse.
Until your own blood becomes a foreign substance
And the world holds it at the palm of its hand
Because it is theirs to claim.
Your girlhood is their plastic wrapped candy.
THE PUB ON 2ND AVE
I am the beast, disfigured,
with my barren tongue and dead beam unsettling wet eyes.
The mirror cracked images,
shards of glass trickling over my boney knuckles.
Narrow walls quivering,
I felt my heartbeat drumming through my throat
as the nauseating sweat ingests my pores.
The stench of my day is one breath away,
my mouth full of absinthian spit and silver iron.
The room convulses like an epileptic performing an embalming ritual.
Bodies hovering over microphone speakers,
the screech of leather boots conversating on the floor tiles.
The bathroom has exhausted opportunities,
a sink trailing of snuff cocaine, pop colored graffiti adorning the vulnerable toilet.
Cheap beer glasses shivering on the pub counter,
next to the scattered, crumbled dollar bills, a junkie's annual collection of pocket change.
The cigarette smoke shrouding over the pool table, embalms me,
the ash sprinkled out like an interrupted ant pile.
A red head in smudged pink lipstick plants one on ripped leather jacket with a heart tattoo
the name ‘Mabel’ written inside.
The cluster crowd, emitting friendly punches, slamming spines against each other.
Exchanging odors and fingernail samples for fragments of hedonistic pleasure.
I am desensitized to pain, as my blood drips like raindrops against car windows,
trailing down fever dream teeth.
Around the mosh pit cameras flashed on torn t-shirts, studded belts,
amethyst bruised faces, popsicle dripped vomit on denim pants.
Devouring my busted lip, I heard the voice of God reprimand me;
Don’t become accustomed to the taste of your own agony.
SPIDER
My mother is everywhere
With her silken web
She creates a culture of fear
Spreading across from person to person.
Each face becomes an
Extension of her
Observing and keeping me
In line.
My mother is the spider
Wrapping me- spinning silk around me
Keeping me hostage to her web
Her legs can feel every movement I make.
My mother is the spider
The silk queen
Capturing my image in her eight blinded eyes
Breathing death and pestilence on my shoulders.
I’ve been wrapped in the silk egg
For longer than I expected
I have outgrown my welcome.
Kathleen Pedraza is a graduate student of English Literature at Florida International University. Pedraza’s passion for poetry stems from a deep fascination with the complexities of the human experience—the interplay of beauty and discomfort that life often presents. In her writing, she explores the nuances of emotion, mental health, and the contradictions that define our identity. Pedraza is drawn to the moments that are both fleeting and profound, capturing the essence of what it means to be human.
