Issue 32: Air | poem by Jesse Sorrell | sculpture by Sorcha McNamara
"Be still and listen. The children are still proclaiming their stories: Our tongues are being severed from the root."
Welcome to KHÔRA, a dynamic online arts space produced in collaboration with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing. Visit our Archive to read previous issues. Scroll down if you’d like your work to be considered for future issues.
Air by Jesse Sorrell | sculpture by Sorcha McNamara
You are not dreaming.
An owl is flying from the
west with a poem on her wings.
The poem is yellow. The yellow
could be the moon but it is not. You will
know this yellow by the time you fall asleep.
The poem is beating inside the fourth chamber of your heart. Wet blue. The whales are singing. Your heart wall is a cave of red vibration. The fires want to kindle into fuel. The poem is the silence swimming beneath the first ocean. A sound growing into an echo reverberating green throughout caves painted in symbol. A flare of heat initiating stars into a circular burst of sun.
The poem
is known to be yellow
because you are breathing.
You are safe in this poem. Breathe.
You are breathing while others are not.
The winds of death are thrumming around you,
pressing onto your chest, tearing your skin as if with
talons, clutching your heart, golden, this red blue throbbing.
You are spilling
yellow. You must know
you are not the first to spill yellow…
Read Air by Jesse Sorrell.
Jesse Sorrell writes to listen between physical and subtle form. He offers spiritual care in community-based, pediatric hospice & palliative care, bereavement, and other therapeutic settings. He lives surrounded by trees and animals in Chapel Hill, NC and is often found in water. His writing is thrilled to make home in KHÔRA.
Sorcha McNamara works as a painter, or more accurately as a maker of things. But even ‘maker’ isn’t really the right word. It’s too organic, too suggestive of the handmade, or the nobility of a craft. Instead, she is more of a conductor, a composer—the person in front of the orchestra waving their arms about, whose function and purpose you may question, but you know they are important for the stability of the whole piece.
Based in the West of Ireland, Sorcha holds an MA in Art + Research Collaboration from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology (2024), and a BA in Painting from Limerick School of Art & Design (2019). Her works have been exhibited in Ireland and internationally, in Tokyo, Lisbon and London. She has previously been selected for residencies at Totaldobze Art Centre, Riga (supported by Ormston House, Limerick and the Artist-Run Network Europe project, 2022); JOYA AiR, Almeria (2022); Tangent Projects, Barcelona (2021); and PADA Studios, Lisbon (2020). Her practice is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
Swim around in KHÔRA.
Artists and Writers
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Writers, read about KHÔRA’s 500 Words here.
Artists, send your artwork to KHÔRA's Images here.
Team-based, collaborative, and curated, KHÔRA is a form that is continually opening. We invite you to join us in sustaining it together. We don't believe in rejections. KHÔRA’s 500 Words is about considering how multiple voices can be heard; how frameworks, traditions, and projects can inform each other; and how new perspectives emerge from collaboration and openness. If you are a visual artist or interested in sharing your artwork or images, ready about KHÔRA’s Images here.
Your words/images will always remain active in KHÔRA’s ocean, and you won’t ever receive a notice of rejection from us. We know this process is not perfect; we wish to stay open to the possibility that at any point, your work will be a fit for a curated issue or team collaboration. This doesn’t need to be a completed piece—think of it like a sample of your work at any length up to 500 words.
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With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad