Mixed Media on Canvas
36 x 48
Available for delivery in DFW. Contact for alternative shipping methods.
Many interactions are based on dualistic classifications. Reduced to binary choices in religion, politics, racial identity etc, we’re often forced to check boxes that require more explanation than space provides. This piece depicts a wavering checkbox outline and how one might choose to complete it.
Inspired by “First Petition” by Divya Victor
it is a Thursday
& no one out on this long street
looks like your mother
so you go home
wrap yourself in Form I-130
knit a nest with a ballpoint pen
limn your ken inside a placeholder
smooth your limbs into a square
to beg for a place for your first space
her
write a name into the petition, in thin
improbable syllables
—no one calls her by this name, in the elsewhere
because they know her fish-market haggle:
purse tucked at the waist, sari pleats pulsing like flushed gills
—no one, except the men
who will ask her ma’am can you name two national holidays?
& ma’am who lived in America before the Europeans arrived?
so you plan it out, letter by letter in letters,
your mouth cupped to her cataracts
ma, just listen & answer the men who ask
how she came to know you, if she intends to remain here,
& sir, for how long have you known
that ma was a bowl made for two, brimming
beyond any border, red
as the arrival of her face seven years later,
a paper apparition drawn closer & closer to you by a queue
unknotting at a frayed horizon
in an airport
when
it is a Thursday
& suddenly she walks
through the passport photograph
you once stapled at the edge of a petition
to anchor her womb
to your migrating heart
Mixed Media on Canvas
36 x 48
Available for delivery in DFW. Contact for alternative shipping methods.
Many interactions are based on dualistic classifications. Reduced to binary choices in religion, politics, racial identity etc, we’re often forced to check boxes that require more explanation than space provides. This piece depicts a wavering checkbox outline and how one might choose to complete it.
Inspired by “First Petition” by Divya Victor
it is a Thursday
& no one out on this long street
looks like your mother
so you go home
wrap yourself in Form I-130
knit a nest with a ballpoint pen
limn your ken inside a placeholder
smooth your limbs into a square
to beg for a place for your first space
her
write a name into the petition, in thin
improbable syllables
—no one calls her by this name, in the elsewhere
because they know her fish-market haggle:
purse tucked at the waist, sari pleats pulsing like flushed gills
—no one, except the men
who will ask her ma’am can you name two national holidays?
& ma’am who lived in America before the Europeans arrived?
so you plan it out, letter by letter in letters,
your mouth cupped to her cataracts
ma, just listen & answer the men who ask
how she came to know you, if she intends to remain here,
& sir, for how long have you known
that ma was a bowl made for two, brimming
beyond any border, red
as the arrival of her face seven years later,
a paper apparition drawn closer & closer to you by a queue
unknotting at a frayed horizon
in an airport
when
it is a Thursday
& suddenly she walks
through the passport photograph
you once stapled at the edge of a petition
to anchor her womb
to your migrating heart
