Issue 34: Fire| poem by Jesse Sorrell | sculpture by Sorcha McNamara
"You are beginning & ending. The world is a sigh on your shoulder."
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.
Fire by Jesse Sorrell | sculpture by Sorcha McNamara
You are beginning & ending.
The world is a sigh on your shoulder. In the sigh there is an owl. Her yellow a light in the night of your life. Her talon pulsing to the rhythm of your breath. Your breath clawing in and out in and out. The feather weight of her body sinking yours a breath deeper into the earth. You feel from the inside out the edges of your body rising from the earth. You could be a cave, a black hole, something unnamed. You could be a bear deep in the soil green earth of hibernation. You could be anything, you could be everything, you could be nothing. You are tinder waiting for the red flame. A whale waiting blue in song. You are alone but you are not. You are on the shore.
The sun is rising in the east.
The head of the sun is crowning
toward the stars. The stars are zipping into dawn
becoming eyelids painted shut. The moon is returning
to a cave of butterflies. The clouds are white strands of color
swallowing each other whole. White is the cloud is the tissue of the eye…
Read more Fire 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.
Issue 34 Highlights
Issue 34 is live! | The crack in my armor by Michael Nagle
Issue 34: dervish; wolf 3 | poem and artwork by Melissa Leto
Issue 34 | Part 3: Nadine's Consensual Home Invasion by Swati Sudarsan photograph by Michel O’Hara
Swim around in KHÔRA.
Artists and Writers
We’re looking for features and our future teams! To enter KHÔRA’s collaborative waters:
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.
If you love what you’re seeing, please subscribe, share, tweet, retweet, and post, and KHÔRA will be back soon.
With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad