Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Mirror Study for Joe (_2010980), 2017. Inkjet print, 45 1/4 x 34 inches. Image courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Council, 2018.
I have never been in love / I am allergic to penicillin/
if you get sprayed by a skunk in Michigan they tell u
to bathe in tomato juice / 2 truths / 1 lie
by Han Schneider
As far as actions go
A concussion is swift
Soft almost
Small knock, sharp touch, a tap
Of a hammer on an awl placed
Just so, i don’t know if my memory of certain
periods is softening and blurred
coffee stain on a page stretching my cursive
into rumpled flakes, birds on a wire, cloudy out today
I don’t know if i can catch the edge
of her skirt’s train as it slips over the
falls, my memory might be swallowed
in on itself at parts of the pavement
because of a golf cart
back of my skull during the spring of 2015 or
My brain stepping out in the wind pulling on a sweater like Meryl streep and
crossing her arms across her chest and
Going out on the deck of memory to
Watch the waves crash salty and violent against the rocks
the theme song of big littles is playing
ooooOOoooOoooo
i know forgetting can be doing me a solid,
Of what i don’t know
memory, she returns to me in the fat tinny sip of unsweetened ice tea
and I remember their sheets
im filing royalty statements while leafing the images of the first time we
fucked
The way snow coat all of bed stuy so quiet
then I see a lighter heating the pocket knife, to get the glass out of my foot
I stand folding a sweater my phone chimes
recipe it calls for canned tomatoes memory a forgiving fog
when i forget what I was goin to say, my dead pay a visit, then my living
her drink order whiskey with an orange peel
my burn of sour after swallow,
this after taste, a rumor of your waist w my hands on it
Published January 15th, 2023
Han Schneider is a writer and health journalist from the Midwest. Currently based in Brooklyn—writing pieces that cut through the noise of health and wellness, to deliver readers accurate information or thoughtful reflection that is both fat and trans-inclusive. Off the clock, Schneider’s poems and prose do the same thing but with more sex appeal— her work can be found in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Glass Poetry, Well + Good, Them, Elite Daily, Allure, and more.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya was born in 1982 in San Bernardino, California. He received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2004 and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2016. Sepuya has had solo shows at Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis (2011); Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York (2017); Team Gallery, New York and Los Angeles (2017 and 2019, respectively); Document Gallery, Chicago (2018); and Fotomuseum Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018). His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions at institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2015); Artist Institute, Hunter College, City University of New York (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2016); New Museum, New York (2017); Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2018); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2018); and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018). Sepuya was awarded the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Los Angeles Emerging Artist Grant in 2017. Sepuya lives and works in Los Angeles.