Issue 13: Salsipuedes: Leave If You Can | They, small dunes | Proof of Life
I’ll keep them a secret, until they become an enigma / And taste like birthdays
Welcome to Khôra, a dynamic online arts space produced in collaboration with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing. Visit our Archive to read previous issues.
This world.
Our hearts are breaking for Ukraine. We considered postponing tonight’s Khôra Salon, but Khôra was birthed during the dark days of the Trump administration and our writers and artists have continued to make brilliant art throughout the pandemic, so let’s spend an hour together tonight celebrating them. RSVP to join us. We also encourage you to read Salsipuedes: Leave if You Can, Lorena Hernández Leonard’s essay about fleeing her home country of Colombia in the wake of widespread violence and massive human rights violations.
Issue 13 is here with a brilliant new team of four writers and four artists, along with work from from our featured artist Yixuan Pan and featured writer Jen Pastiloff.
Featured writer Jen Pastiloff is the best-selling author of On Being Human, as well as a public speaker, personal coach, and creator of the Shame Loss movement. Jen is the founder of the literary website The Manifest-Station and has a podcast with Alicia Easter called What Are You Bringing? Jen’s poem Proof of Life was written during the 30 Day Poetry Challenge she is hosting during the month of February 2022:
I have nothing to show for it
my friend said of her life
like she was dying in a hospital bed somewhere
her life to be sold by a real-estate agent
hurrying in heels
who couldn’t possibly show my friend’s life
without something,
anything to offer prospective buyers
because how would they know what they were getting into?
Featured artist Yixuan Pan was born and raised in Hunan, China. Growing up speaking Mandarin Chinese, then having traveled and moved frequently, Pan has decided to “keep being confused about language.” Pan shares that her “lack of knowledge has become the creative fuel that powers her curiosity and explorations. By dislocating language from its context and form, [her] work questions the linguistic structures people learn and unlearn.” Read Pan’s They, small dunes.
In Issue 13, we’re thrilled to introduce our new collaborative team of curated writers: Bazeed, Amy Estes, Tammy Heejae Lee, and Lorena Hernández Leonard, and artists: Hyun Jung Ahn, Tyler James Bangkok, Theano Giannezi, and Farangiz Yusupova.
Check out the highlights below.
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Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/Khôra squad
Issue 13 Highlights
Salsipuedes: Leave if You Can by Lorena Hernández Leonard / Artwork by Theano Giannezi
“The immense anthropology classroom was dark, the only light coming from a projector showed images of colorful pastoral houses similar to the ones I had known in my childhood. “Salsipuedes...'' the professor said; my ears perked up. Salsipuedes was a word I recognized despite his funny accent. A phantom name of my past. The professor explained that Salsipuedes was a leave-taking ritual performed in Colombia during social gatherings. An anthropological study in intercultural communication that had been conducted in the late 1980’s had revealed how imperative human connection is to Colombians…”
Read Salsipuedes: Leave if You Can.
Hasuk by Tammy Heejae Lee / Artwork by Farangiz Yusupova
“When she first came upon the listing on the SF Korean website, Hana thought it was a scam: a fully furnished master bedroom in Japantown for $750 a month, with homemade meals available on the weekends. The pictures looked too immaculate to be real, but her mother insisted she apply anyway, claiming to have a good feeling about it. She had said the same thing about all the other ones too, during the week Hana spent in San Francisco visiting other hasuk listings in the area. Most of them were too dirty or crowded with other tenants for her to feel comfortable sharing a space with. She bought a potted orchid and a box of persimmons—her mother’s suggestion, to stand out from other applicants—and showed up to the address the Japantown lister had sent her. She had never felt a desperation like this before, and with the semester starting in a few weeks, she was running out of options.…”
Read Hasuk.
Teaching in Context by Amy Estes / Artwork by Tyler James Bangkok
“It’s Friday at 4 p.m., and the after-work crowd begins taking seats at the bar and pushing tables together. Beers are ordered, shots are poured, glasses are clinked with cheers to the weekend. Slowly, the noise level creeps to a roar that forces everyone to yell, punctuated by the occasional high-pitched scream, clapping, and explosions of laughter. It’s early—the sun is still up, so there’s no cover for dirty deeds typically done in darkness.…”
Read Teaching in Context.
Thus Spake Sara Elkamel by Bazeed / Artwork by Hyun Jung Ahn
“as told in Field of No Justice by Sara Elkamel
i.
The name I gave my body I thought meant dream but it doesn’t it means
this small thing.
ii.
I was already ghost.
Our bodies thaw in pools around our legs—
the blue of one ocean would replace another:
a form of mercy. What’s the point, now?
Ghosts cannot cross water so here we are
dropping fruit after fruit after fruit
bargained for by orphans
in the throes of noon;
I cannot picture them ripening.…”
Read Thus Spake Sara Elkamel.
Khôra will be back next month.
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