someone should tell you where you are going
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when you sleep,
apples fall out your mouth and tumble, wet wounds, to the ground. wake and the work of forgetting begins. today, the dishes must be done. today, the stairwell is still too narrow for two people. today, you will pass someone on your way down. now, you imagine a dry grief, a swollen tongue. you memorize a lake-like sort of peace, the kind soaked in stillness. you must keep moving. you don’t think you’ll find yourself even if you go somewhere else. wake again and again and always find a hollow mouth, a tongue that tastes of night. someone should tell you where you are going. |
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Charnell Peters is the author of the poetry chapbook Un-becoming (Thirty West Publishing House). Her previous work has appeared in Apogee, Hippocampus, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. She is the blog editor for Ruminate Magazine.
Jia Sung is an artist and educator, born in Minnesota, bred in Singapore, now based in Brooklyn, and received a BFA from RISD in 2015. She is currently a 2018-2019 Smack Mellon Studio Artist and Van Lier Fellow, and an art director at Guernica. Her paintings and artist books have been exhibited across North America, including the Knockdown Center, RISD Museum, Wave Hill, EFA Project Space, Lincoln Center, Yale University, and MOMA PS1, and in publications including Hyperallergic, Jacobin Magazine, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and The Guardian.