“After ‘listing (v), 2013′” by Chimwemwe Undi (Sneak peek of Room 47.4 FULL CIRCLE)

Chimwemwe Undi

As fall brings us new winds and heralds change, we’re sitting with “After ‘listing (v), 2013′” by Chimwemwe Undi from our upcoming Room 47.4 Full Circle now available for pre-order!


“After ‘listing (v), 2013′”
by Chimwemwe Undi

The trouble is I was nineteen, and no exception,
resigned to writing about death: my looming own

or ours, unceasing. I was resigned to screaming,
to brevity, to a knowing acquired like language

grammar mapped onto some inborn faculty,
a prerequisite to speech. I used to keep vigil

and a vigil candle by the door, and when I went
my friends were there. I read that poem

to white people on the West Coast, wet-eyed
and reaching. I took a Greyhound to Moose Jaw,

Saskatchewan, and I read that poem
for drink tickets in a room I could not leave alone.

I wish I never wrote it. It is hard to end up a body,
so I started with a joke. The poem tried, and failed.

It, and by “it” I mean “I,” tried to do
what only death could, and then only televised

and then only briefly—the air rent, broadcast,
then a pellucid reckoning, the grim momentum

that ends without apology, with a kente cloth
banner on a LinkedIn account. I knew

something then I don’t know now.
I believed it so much and now,

God, I can’t remember.

 


Find more dream-like pieces that ask what non-linear stories do we have to tell? in Room 47.4 Full Circle.

 

Header image: photo of Chimwemwe Undi by Imalka Nilmalgoda.

Chimwemwe Undi is a writer, editor and lawyer living on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her debut collection, Scientific Marvel, was published by House of Anansi Press in 2024.

Tags: 47.4 | Poetry

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ROOM 47.4 FULL CIRCLE
Step back with Room into the past, to parents, to childhood homes, and to people once known and loved; dig into themes of grief and healing; and ultimately explore what it means to come full circle in literature.

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ROOM 47.3 BODIES
Join Room in a deep dive on the body: touch and isolation, trans and queer embodiment, fat liberation, chronic illness and disability, brutality, sensuality, and other meditations on the bones and muscles you inhabit every day.

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