“H E R chair” & “untitled (from ashen-white)”

Translated from Chinese by Jill Zheng


H E R chair She was sitting on a chair talking about her chair poem. There was a {her} lifted centered above the line (the d a n g l i n g seat) she didn't claim but demands her existence loiters taunts the parse I didn't know where to put her the pronoun being protruded the determiner being determined the modifier being modified There will always be a chair, untaken There will always have been chairmen, by mistaking her {her} presence lingers by one leg She can exist but I didn't know where to put her he said

from ashen-white to scarlet red my furrowed muscles are you historied sulcus abraded wrinkled chapping osmosing as saturated [the next two words are written vertically] cellular interstices as forcing out a self- bloated acne what's there in 痕 迹 scar-trace? 「痕」 is inscribed with 疒 that resembles a sickbed 「迹」bears the foot 辶 that signifies roving trauma groves feet so does everything in flux that which circulates could yet architect a rise in dimensions

 

(Please click on the image and use the zoom function to read the poem. A transcript is available in the ALT text.)

 

Note on the second poem:

This poem is prompted by paintings which Chinese artist Tang Song spent decades working on as a means of processing trauma, particularly the painting “After After Wine.”