"Untitled" by Jing Lin
Eighteen by Jill Khoury
i’m told to fit thinly into the girl-grid / those other
females are so blackbird blackbird magpie crow
mother roasts them over a leafy simulacrum
for me to dismember / a singalong, a toast
to romanticize my teeth on sinew / the wing’s curve
so feminine / but she heimlichs the envy right out of me
brags she looks illfed in only the best way / [has a secret brain swerve] /
[can I get a way with a word like cadaverine]
i’m told looking normal is the best path to prosperity /
told i should want the plastic boy but not to play with him too much
—strolling with my girls / core temperature too high /
swirl of pink lace rosette icing-sugar kitten t-shirt
and fairytale page hidden in my pocket / the paper
is not acid-free / our hips bump together
females are so blackbird blackbird magpie crow
mother roasts them over a leafy simulacrum
for me to dismember / a singalong, a toast
to romanticize my teeth on sinew / the wing’s curve
so feminine / but she heimlichs the envy right out of me
brags she looks illfed in only the best way / [has a secret brain swerve] /
[can I get a way with a word like cadaverine]
i’m told looking normal is the best path to prosperity /
told i should want the plastic boy but not to play with him too much
—strolling with my girls / core temperature too high /
swirl of pink lace rosette icing-sugar kitten t-shirt
and fairytale page hidden in my pocket / the paper
is not acid-free / our hips bump together
Jill Khoury writes about the intersection of gender and disability. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University and edits Rogue Agent, a journal of embodied poetry and art. She has written two chapbooks--Borrowed Bodies (Pudding House, 2009) and Chance Operations (Paper Nautilus, 2016). Her debut full-length collection, Suites for the Modern Dancer, was released in 2016 from Sundress Publications. Find her at jillkhoury.com.
In her mysterious monochromatic photographs, Jing Lin reconstructs a familiar world that no one has been to. Her background in motion pictures informs her current work. As a graduate photography student at Academy of Art University, she worked with multiple darkroom techniques in traditional and alternative printing processes. She blurs the edge between photography and painting through the use of experimental processes. Solitary, Jing’s most recent body of work, portrays a nonexistent place to examine the theme of self-confinement. Constantly, she explores photography with these questions in mind: What did I see? What did I not see? www.jinglinphotography.com/
Chinese, b. 1993, Chengdu, China, based in San Francisco, USA.
Chinese, b. 1993, Chengdu, China, based in San Francisco, USA.
