TURIYA LITERARY REVIEW
TLR Issue 3 - Fall 2026
Lemon Tree and Spiders
Poems by Ramesh Karthik Nayak
Lemon Tree and Spiders
An old lemon tree,
draped in fine silk threads.
Spiders anchor themselves
at the ends,
weaving napkins
to shroud dead insects—
a farewell the world
will remember until its end.
A world of mathematics
spins through threads
and lemon thorns.
As time’s grace fades,
its count dissolves into the threads,
transforming into a cluster of fangs.
Like a gypsy girl
holding emptiness in her hands,
the sunlight dances,
making the threads palpitate.
The sun turns them
into silver strings,
while every morning,
The breeze tunes a melody.
Mosquitoes and flies
practice the music,
Their symphony is fleeting.
One day, those strings
will become the finest fabric.
An indigenous poet’s daughter
may clothe a bird, a frog, or a snake—
unaware that they carry
death’s shadow with them.
Flowers, buds, and thorns
play a game of dice.
The thorn betrays the flower and bud;
the flower falls,
its petals severed,
like shattered wings.
The buds drop,
resembling tiny coconut apples.
The lemon’s scent,
a spellbinding lullaby,
invites breezes from distant horizons.
Yet no breeze
can displace it completely.
Tiny lemons grow
like green roses,
filling themselves
with earth’s fermented sweat.
The unmelted dreams of the season
condense into their seeds.
The tree’s pain
glows golden yellow on its thorns,
its joy sharpens
to dark green tips.
The thorns pierce
both the moon and sun,
scarring the earth—
day after day.
Ripples Underneath My Heart
Underneath my heart,
ripples run trembling.
I can feel the emptiness
lingering between them.
Ripples curl endlessly,
drawing me in again and again,
no escape in sight.
Unseen labyrinths
wait for me to step in,
yet I lie unconsciously
on a speck of dust.
Someone dear of mine
Awaits on the ripples.
On the last ripple,
I see my friends,
breaking free from my memories,
which was stacked in between
unfinished words that
my past graffitied on my heart and lost itself.
They stand barefoot,
shouting loudly,
waving their wounded hands:
“Friend! O, Friend!”
On another ripple,
My family digs for me.
But they find nothing
except scribbled, crumpled papers.
My scribblings ooze blue,
my crumplings carve
coal mines in their hands.
Yet they will never give up,
digging until they uncover my excavation.
On the third ripple,
a war rages
among my memories.
They lie injured,
cut to pieces,
with faces torn and ripped away.
Black blood flows from them,
engulfing me in a storm of fear.
I see a few poems I once wrote-
about people, animals, and love.
Love runs like the wind
from the wilderness
of an animal’s shadow.
People seem a little busy—
some pluck rotten flesh
from their own bodies,
others uproot the buried bullets
lodged deep within,
where rivers of blood
once flowed
but now lie still
on the banks of war.
And there are more ripples,
unfurling endlessly.
I see them as fence lines,
feel them as frozen seasons.
Can anyone wake me
from death’s embrace?
Can anyone help me understand:
am I still myself,
or merely a hollow piece of flesh?
Summer Nights
Nights stretch long
into the moon’s courtyard.
Half the night dissolves
into dry, warm winds
and rains upon wildflowers.
The touch frees
insects from pollen’s grip,
guiding them toward the dung heaps.
Dry dreams scatter reeds to the wind,
yearning to glimpse its face.
Yet the wind, unknowing,
sows seeds of the night
only to stray into the human world.
Mogra buds, still in their sleep,
call out to other flowers.
Scents journey to the mogra,
building a bridge for ancestors,
who tread softly into minds,
unearthing buried histories.
The bells from cattle necks
whisper of the day’s cruelty.
Dry oranges fall from nowhere,
splitting open sweat-laden pores,
spilling summer’s unspoken truths.
About
Ramesh Karthik Nayak is the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in Telugu for the year 2024 for his short story collection, “Dhaavlo”. He is the first tribal and youngest Telugu author to receive this honour at the age of twenty-six. He is a bilingual poet, short-story writer, editor and translator from Telangana. He has seven books to his credit, six in Telugu, and a poetry collection in English, Chakmak, which was awarded the 2024 Muse India Young Writer Award in the Poetry category. He is one of the first writers in Telugu to depict the lifestyle of the Banjaras. His poems have appeared elsewhere and have been translated into Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese and Marathi. He received Kalahamsa Kavitha Puraskaram; Tribal Young Achievers Award from Telangana state government; Banjara Youth Icon Award; Ravi Sastri Katha Puraskaram among others. Some of his poems are part of higher education syllabus. His latest book is Taando, a poetry collection.
