TRANSLATION

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

Translated from Chinese by Jill Zheng

By JILL ZHENG  |  16 APR 2024

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

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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.”

 

Jill Zheng is a multimodal poet, who explores language as materials in visual, sonic, kinetic modes at the intersection of image, performance, etc. Her poetics takes its inspirational root from the concreteness of Chinese characters, and seeks to traverse linguistic boundaries for re-imagination and reading re-orientation. Her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, streetcake experimental anthology, Bat City Review, and more.

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