Karo Ska | i am my father’s child | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Karo Ska (she/they) is a South Asian and Eastern European gender-fluid poet living on unceded Tongva land. Anti-capitalist & anti-authoritarian, they find joy where they can. Their writing focuses on identity, mental health, survivorship and the intersections of trauma and politics. They have been published in Dryland Literary Journal, Cultural Daily, Altadena Poetry Review, Marías at Sampaguitas, among others. They are a 3-time 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2021 Cal Arts Artist Fellow, and were a 2020 semi-finalist in the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize. Their first full-length collection, loving my salt-drenched bones was released in February 2022 through World Stage Press.

Karo Ska's Website

Karo Ska on Instagram

Also by Karo Ska: loving my salt-drenched bones Three Poems Two Poems

April 2022

Karo Ska

i am my father’s child

i am my father’s child, i know this as sure as contraction & expansion of my veins, an intimate ribcage knowledge i can’t deny. his mother, my grandmother inhabits my bones, as does her mother. their blood cemented in mine. at night, i dream of her, she teaches me wisdom, buries it under my skin, leaf-letters i unfold in the morning. i am my father’s child. i have never met him. he has never seen me. in a magazine interview, he’s asked about his family & his children. he laughs, calls himself a confirmed bachelor, but i breathe a sigh of relief when he doesn’t deny me, doesn’t say, i have no children. in the same interview, he talks of his mother, he always speaks fondly of her. he was his mother’s child. her name is Sayida. Sayida. Sayida rolls off my tongue, pinches my cheeks. Sayida. she grew up in kolkata, a student of rokeya sakhawat hossain. like me, they wanted liberation for women, for all. who else breathed this into me? i am my father’s child. when asked what he would be if not a filmmaker he says writer. and i know i am my father’s child. his imprint stamped in the knotting of my joints, in the vermillion of my blood, in the sand of my skin. i am my father’s child, i am my grandmother’s spirit, i am me — a mixture of many flowers blooming in my pores.

< Previous (Karen Paul Holmes)Next (Ilari Pass) >