Mapping Home
by HAUNTIE
Body
A meeting place between the many times that came before it
These times, the trajectories that brought me to be here now
Body
A passing form
like a flower
the slowest moment of rupture in a single time
in time—body as memory
through time—body as home
with time—body as matter
i am body, yet i do not claim body
i never meant to sever with ink
What is the act of mark making, if not to define?
And what is definition, if not without exclusion?
What is exclusion, if not the cutting of matter?
The abstraction of cartography occurs
when the difference of parts is blurred
and lines are no longer visible
and place is not but visceral.
From To Whitey & the Cracker Jack (Anhinga Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by May Yang. Reprinted by permission of Anhinga Press.
May Yang
May Yang is a first-generation Hmong American artist, writer, and ethnographer from California. Writing under the persona “Hauntie,” she is the author of To Whitey and the Cracker Jack (Anhinga Press, 2017), which was selected by Evie Shockley for the 2016 Robert Dana Prize in Poetry.