#house a

[bostonpoetryslam]

In stories we kept reading, wandering was a punishment, and we were instructed to pity the immigrant, the foreigner, the stranger. But what if the absence of a point of reference is not something to be lamented but a structural foundation on which to build a house we fill with water?

Jennifer S. Cheng, “Dear Mao,” from House A

[finn-wilkie]

Whispering Smith, House A, Perth, 2018

www.whisperingsmith.com.au/

[therumpus]

At its worst, America has always been a place of oppression, hegemony, colonialism, greed; but the best of its people have sought to make it less so, to address its wrongs, to make it a home for disparate homes, huddled masses, tired, poor, wretched, homeless. I realize it is optimistic to want to claim “American” when it does not always want me, but the idealist in me wants to assert that my home is more American than the president’s home.

What Is Being Charted Here?: Talking With Jennifer S. Cheng by Emma Winsor Wood

[bostonpoetryslam]

No one told me how to mark the gaps between us, how to compensate for them in the first place.                     No one told me that if I left, there would always                     be a reason to return.

Jennifer S. Cheng, “How to Build an American Home,” from House A

[bostonpoetryslam]

to chart a shadow is to draw a body closer to its longing.

Jennifer S. Cheng, “House A; Geometry B,”  from House A

[bostonpoetryslam]

Whereas sound opens up the space behind us, which we cannot see. Whereas sound is the distance between two ghosts, the effect of two surfaces rubbing against each other.                      What, then, is the sound I make to say, here?

Jennifer S. Cheng, “How to Build an American Home,” from House A

[bostonpoetryslam]

If sleep were a language, it would not sound like nothing but would instead materialize both longing and distance, history and myth.

Jennifer S. Cheng, “Dear Mao,” from House A