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Inheriting the Hurricane

We inherit the hurricane
from the sky & destroy
 
our bodies as if it were
the most ancestral
 
ritual. We kneel down
on separate bedroom floors.
 
You mix alcohol
with tobacco, steal a light
 
& house the mixture
inside your mouth.
 
Smoke from your lips
snakes 2,451 miles of skyline
 
before entering
my lungs. I refuse
 
to eat because after
mourning you
 
there are no rooms left
in my stomach
 
for food. We have lost
a homeland.
 
We have lost
each other. Now,
 
our body is the only
home we still have left.
 
         We can’t lose that, too.
Picture
Ze Gao. Untitled Color 1, 2014. Photograph. Courtesy of the artist.

Jess X. Chen is a queer, Asian-American artist, filmmaker, and poet. Her first full-length book of poems, Sing Me A Time Machine, is forthcoming. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and her artwork has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, The U.N. Human Rights Council, and on indoor and outdoor walls throughout the U.S. Her poems have appeared in The Offing, Nepantla: A Journal for Queer Poets of Color, The Margins, and on stages, TEDx conferences, backyards, and rooftops nationwide. You can find out more about her work at www.jessxchen.com.
Ze Gao was born in China in 1992. He is a photographer, painter, curator, national senior photographer, and makeup artist in China. He studied fine arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and obtained an MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He was also admitted into the Professional Teaching Materials for Students of Photography in Higher Education Institutions in China. His works have been showcased in many exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Korea, Singapore, and China. 
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