Un/a/muse
Kale Hensley
What lofts there are to this lack, to thy quiver of quiet.
Should I have expected less? Afterall, I was created
to purr in figment, yet I caused such keen destruction.
Beloved, isn’t this what you wanted? Barefoot, come
I to lay my cheek upon your thigh, follow suit and play
mute; if I had been the inane of the mundane, might
you have kept me close to your chest? Allowed a finger
upon the bloodiest of all instruments? I could have
been your savior, milksop, could have met your tender
rasps with deliberate fire. So unfortunate, that you
belong to the breed called godly men, who believe vigor
is to turn the cheek to every attractive thing, under
a guise that it could save you, but desire is enormity–
it is walking into the sea knowing there is salvation
in a drowning. This is the ritual, then. My arms full
of your very flesh and your mouth full of my breath.
Kale Hensley (she/they) is a poet and visual artist from West Virginia. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Booth, Evergreen Review, and Sonora Review. Find more of her writing at kalehens.com.
Artwork Source: “Sense of Duration,” allison anne
Artist Statement: Collage is a site of expansiveness and change, part of a creative ecosystem of transformative mediums that rethink how art can be shared. It reframes and pushes against capitalist ideas of ‘value’ while exploring different avenues of community-building and exchange. There’s an element of collage that has always felt inherently queer — remaking and restructuring, collaborating with the very world around us.
My personal creative practice is primarily abstract, shaped by my experience and identity as a fat, queer, white, nonbinary person. American culture is not singular, nor is it a monolith — surrounded by layers of paper, fingers sticky from adhesive, drawing on my background in sociology, cultural studies and gender studies, I find myself asking questions — what do we value, and how do we represent it? What do we leave behind, and what is changing as we look ahead? Collage offers a chance to further interrogate, reclaim and broaden our perspectives.
allison anne is a queer, nonbinary multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (unceded Očhéthi Šakówiŋ land), working in collage, zinemaking, mail art, book art, design & publishing. By recontextualizing images and materials, allison seeks to create complex textural, intuitive abstractions and configurations which prioritize that which is found, discarded and left behind, exploring the intersections & interactions between context, materiality and creativity. They co-founded the projects Twin Cities Collage Collective and NONMACHINABLE, which connect and publish artists & creatives locally and around the world. Connect with them at allisonanne.com or on Instagram at @allisonannecollage.
The Turning Leaf Journal 