Jennie Jieun Lee, Julio, 2015. Glazed stoneware, 15 × 13 x 2 inches. Courtesy the artist and Martos Gallery, New York.
I drag my Non-ness to the doctor for a “women’s health visit”
by Rachel Whalen
2020 Poetry Contest Honorable Mention
Well of course we don’t want to go but this time
I bribe Body Non with a redeye
and their favorite puzzle.
The fish are limber and the redeye is black
and Nonny puzzles out loud
in the waiting room rattle:
fe male me non
fe non pheno no
me male mine non
name non mirth o
men here me non
no men non new
fe mur not non
he on neon
femme omen me noon
fem no men on
When the doctor asks my gender I tell her: phenomenon.
Body Non disappears when this doesn’t go
over. They leave. I’m left
with my big rotting lonely lumber my big
rattling my big limbs
ratting and rottling.
Published April 19th, 2020
Rachel Whalen is a poet and playwright from Buffalo, New York. They are an educator and MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University, and they serve as an assistant poetry editor at Washington Square Review.
Jennie Jieun Lee is an artist born in Seoul and based in New York, where she moved at a young age. After receiving a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and attending the AICAD Program at the San Francisco Institute of Art, Lee spent a decade working in Fashion. She received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Pollack Krasner Foundation grant, Artadia New York Award, and CSULB Graduate Research Fellowship. She has shown work in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Brussells, and Milan.