“We are all meat, striving to be human.” — Neha Choksi, 2015

“We are all meat, striving to be human.” — Neha Choksi, 2015

There was a moment when Neha Choksi was going over her work this past week that I felt a deep well of emotion spout up. She was explaining her installation, Everything Sunbright, the layers, time, years that she’d put into it. How it had formed/come together/gestated&arrived on its own terms. It’s body intact, imbued with every hand and voice that had created it.

I h3ld my ch3st.

country country negril jamaica where i spread my father.

Cold

by

Kim Hyesoon

translated by Vanessa Falco and Kim Sunghyun

It was like I was inside the black-and-white photo of you looking back.

We stared at each other from different worlds.

It was always cold inside this photo of you.

Trees stood all along the river, coughing and coughing.

Whenever I opened my eyes, I was climbing a snowy mountain.

I would barely turn a corner and find fields of pure-white snow,

and an infinity of precipices jutting out beneath sharp cliffs.

There was an evening when I looked into your eyes, wide like a frozen sky.

In the village, a rumor spread about a ghost who would return to spread a fever,

so smokestacks shook their bodies helter-skelter over every chimney.

I drove you out completely. Now none of you lives inside me.

An avalanche shook inside my chest for over an hour.

When the trees coughed and snow fell off their bodies,

icicles shot up violent in the empty valley.

I sat down on a frozen bench

with my lips trembling and the wind across my face.

I wanted to get out of this place – this photo of you looking back.