Issue 7: Wild Spring Immunity Tea, When Bodies Touch, A Portrait
When the world feels like too much, take your grief into the woods.
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 issue’s featured writer, Gina Rae La Cerva, is a geographer, environmental anthropologist, and award-winning writer. Her book Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food was recommended by the New York Times for their 2020 Summer Reading List. Gina’s search for “the last untamed food” began after she noticed an increase in the price of wild-caught foods. “Foods that had been associated with subsistence and poverty for most of human history” had suddenly become luxuries, and she set out on a quest to understand why. Wild Spring Immunity Tea was written after a recent forage near Gina’s home in Santa Fe, and the piece is accompanied by a photograph of her finds.
Esther Pearl Watson’s series “Safer at Home: Pandemic Paintings” is a collection of 100 small paintings created in the tradition of ex-votos. Esther has been working in this style for several years; prior to the pandemic, many of her paintings include visits from spaceships and alien visitors. Esther chose the Carpenter’s quirky, creepy version of “The Rainbow Connection” to accompany her painting, The Stay at Home Order Starts at Midnight. She writes, “What was heading our way? We had no idea how to protect our families. Looking back, it is easy to see some of our early rushes to the store to stock up on toilet paper or disinfectant wipes were desperate acts of an anxious society.”
We’re thrilled to share new work from our current team of curated writers and artists. If you love what you’re seeing, please share, tweet, retweet, and post, and Khôra will be back next month.
Yours,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/Khôra squad
“When the world feels like too much, take your grief into the woods. Bring a basket and a pair of sharp scissors.”
— from Wild Spring Immunity Tea by Featured Writer Gina Rae La Cerva
Issue 7 Highlights
Wild Spring Immunity Tea by Featured Writer Gina Rae La Cerva
“When the world feels like too much, take your grief into the woods. Bring a basket and a pair of sharp scissors.
Gather over-wintered rose hips from the bare stalks of wild roses. They will taste jammy and sweet, leathery on the tongue, like Nature’s candy. Sit on the ground and eat a few. Spit out the many seeds as a prayer for new flowers.
Gently pull off wrinkled juniper berries, leftovers from last fall. They will sound like hail as they drop into your basket…”
Read Wild Spring Immunity Tea.
When Bodies Touch by Roe McDermott / artwork by Saskia Jordá
“It’s been five months since anyone outside of my immediate family has touched me. Fourteen months since my partner has touched me. A decade since abuse first touched me. Three years since abuse last touched me. I can’t remember the last time a stranger touched me.
Every cell in your body regenerates every seven years.
This isn’t entirely true, but true enough…”
Read When Bodies Touch.
A Portrait by Eva Recinos / artwork by Christina McPhee
“Commission: a portrait, to be hung in a large gilded frame, for posterity
Medium: paint, but open to mixed media
Schedule: available for virtual or socially distanced sitting sessions
Clothing:
I think about the outfits I once wore en la sala. A black dress. Just the right length. Short enough to show off my legs, which are shaved, of course. My mom says my legs are like my grandma’s legs, full and tan—but no cleavage, no midriff. Not too tight, but tight enough to be form-fitting. Finished off with the perfect pair of heels…”
Read A Portrait.
Scylla by Nay Saysourinho / artwork by Samira Abbassy
“The first thing they noticed when the body washed ashore were twelve tentacles where two legs should have been. The next thing they noticed was the presence of four breasts on her scarred torso. Finally, the last thing they noticed were the seemingly Asian features of her brown face, framed by long silken hair.
Amused comparisons in the media were made to the Hokusai print, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife. But the creature’s slackened mouth, red and fleshy, exuded a carnality that verged too closely on the monstrous to be palatable. And so, she became known as The Hokusai Nightmare, until they could pin her on the evolutionary tree with a scientific name…”
Read Scylla.
The Stay at Home Order Starts at Midnight by Featured Artist Esther Pearl Watson
“In March 2020, I began creating a series of daily paintings to capture what I was seeing as I drove to my studio during the pandemic. (This series became “Safer at Home: Pandemic Paintings,” shown at Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA). This particular painting shows how muddled I felt during the early days. What was heading our way? We had no idea how to protect our families. Looking back, it is easy to see some of our early rushes to the store to stock up on toilet paper or disinfectant wipes were desperate acts of an anxious society…”
Read The Stay at Home Order Starts at Midnight.
Absolutely Not an Autobiographical Account by Kat Lewis / artwork by Lynne Harlow
“Masha will shit her pants in three hours. She does not know this yet. Right now, she is sitting at the breakfast bar in her boyfriend’s house, the boyfriend she has been dating since high school, the boyfriend she doesn’t know how to break up with. At the bar, she opens her second personal cup of Blue Bell Ice Cream.
Mrs. Harris—the boyfriend’s mother—says from the sink, “That is so unlike you, Masha.”
“What is?”
“Eating two ice creams. You know you usually eat like a bird…”
Read Absolutely Not an Autobiographical Account.
Khôra will be back next month.
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