Even when I can’t smell I’m experiencing the world’s vicarious senses. The nose tingles. Ochre walks. 

The sun is a tambourine. A sum of color.

I am covered in hives on this beautiful May morning. 

Naturally, I dreamt I was working a hospitality gig on a cruise ship taken hostage by pirates being workers we are left to die I look out to the ocean wondering if I could swim to shore before drowning or before being shot conducting this reasoning is quite tiring so I’m resigned to dying on the ship where at least I can gather my nerves.

Naturally in another dream I await the gallows I allow the noose to be snug I step I await the gallows I allow the noose to be snug I step I await the gallows.

‎My dreams tell me I am likely to die in a maritime way.

My horoscope tells me I am deferring the consequences of my actions.

I lick my right inner forearm knowing I’ve made a breakthrough.

We have different theories of fear namely derived from its presumed shape. She says fear is triangular I say fear is cylindrical.

Every poem contains my desire. 

Every poem contains my anger.

Every poem contains my revolt.

Over the years, the doors close. A trigger like a girl ate me up. A dry swallow. I held my direct gaze at the machine I was servicing. I wanted her so badly. I wanted her to know our struggles were adjacent. Increasingly it became difficult to speak in her dialect. My attention span had shrunk. Yes, it’s true. I was subsisting on leftover Halloween candy. Am I making myself understood? The question: one out/of translation. Conclusion A: I am neither equipped nor inoculated to handle nuance.  

Conclusion B: A sense of free form gesture or everyday calligraphy requires repetition. I feel it when I pen my signature for petty documents. I felt it when I wrote a thank you card to my aunt who I hadn’t seen in 20 years.

You could mistake it for a blessing.

I always wanted to transform a painting, e.g. vandalize it. Every technology reflects the desires of its creator. Fuck the creator. I am its drone. I’ve told this story so many times, I might have a complex. Listen: or don’t. I am beginning to distinguish my subjectivity from hers. It’s entrancing.

Catherine Chen is a multidisciplinary poet and performer. They have received fellowships from Theater Mitu, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (Arts Center Residency 2021), Lambda Literary, Poets House, and Franconia Sculpture Park. Their poems appear in The Rumpus, Hyperallergic, Apogee, Nat. Brut, among others. Chen is the author of Beautiful Machine Woman Language (Noemi Press, 2023). They live in Brooklyn.

Kathryn Godoy (they/them) is a 24 year old artist working in Ridgewood, NY. They hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology with a concentration in painting. Kathryn’s work expands upon ideas of memory, transformation, an interest in Jungian psychoanalysis and myth. Presently, Kathryn is exploring the mediums of text and sound. Although Kathryn has created primarily with painting media, the works themselves are more assemblages than paintings. Using color, texture and opacity Kathryn evokes the sense of lush, magnificent, gelatinous psychic landscapes where time slows down but dust still moves. Rendering imagery of stars and celestial bodies Kathryn imbues a renewed spirituality and connection to the world around us here and now.