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Human expression is never orderly.
​It is a space of disruption.To let ourselves express means to be vulnerable.​It means to invert syntax so as to articulate the visceral. 




​The Fissured Tongue Series 

From "Keşke"
Four poems by Jennifer A. ​Reimer
Keşke XVIII.
 
—she— joins 
           
            Mediterranean to Aegean
 
in Demre where the huntress
           
—she— wild and tame Artemis           
                       
                        refuses             Lycian
                       
marriage           :           river to
 
sea       silt       covered            alliance
                                                           
            Myra    worships         
 
            Roman                         Diana’s
 
templed shadows :        wilderness          virginity childbirth
 
            beneath            moon     hunt                
 
            high                 cliffs               
           
            carved              rock     belief :  
                                   
                        tombs              the dead
 
resemble          treasure            transported
 
            chests  X marked         by a wing— 
 
like      pirates              map
                       
                        fabled              like creature
 
St Nicholas      his arrival
 
                        steals
                                                —her— 
            star     
 
            nights   sky :                 Orion’s bow
 
            bends                           sailors from Bari
                                   
—her—           heart                seize      saint’s
 
            forgotten                      relics
 
Myra                                        in 1087
 
            heaps of Murex shells               evidence
 
Andriake harbor          where now       ongoing operation
 
                                    —she—                      
 
                                    waits—            for the production
                                                           
                                                            of purple dye      
                                    keşke
 
—she—                                   Artemis
                                                                        acted out in anger 
                                                flies                  whenever
            from his boat                                       her wishes— 
                                                                                          keşke— 
                                    arrows                          disobeyed
                                                seas
                                                            surfaces—                       
Picture
"Expedition Oriental Body" by Salma Ahmad Caller. Indian Ink, collage, graphite, gold dust pigment on acid free cartridge paper, 59.4cm x 84.1cm, 2018.
Keşke XIX.
 
—she— 
            seas
                        split     stone
 
from wish        :          the Roman chapel
 
                                    ruins
belonging
                                                one— 
 
                                                            another
 
condition                     secures             absence
 
                        with                 draws  
 
myths               memory           :           I might claim to be nothing less
                                                                        than
                                                                                     --she— 
            who                 beckons          
                       
                        —you—  
 
            blown                          back
 
            by                    —her—                       wine, water, robes
 
                        gifts                                           and so much else, too
 
wind    :           wish                            
           
            ​ --Neşko 1—               
 
holds                her                   lines
 
            body                hard
 
                        rocks               
 
cast      net       cast      spell
 
            bind                                         some new intrigue
 
me                   words                          all compassion
 
            —she—          
 
does     not       speak               ​ --keşke— 
 
            “to conceal”
 
diversion            distraction
 
            from—                                                you gods who cannot bear
 
lone                 longing                                  to let a goddess sleep with a man
                                                                       
—inconsolable—                                        even if it is
           
            fate                                                      without
 
            threads                                                concealment
 
skin                  gold
                                   
            etches             
 
            names             
                                    —her— 
Keşke XXV.
 
As the hills
                        fall      
                                    again
 
worlds recede : ridge : the greening
 
days form hours          
 
                        plaited
 
                                    desires  —she—  
 
not yet stone nor
                                    —seas— 
 
leave    taking              nothing           
 
                                    in         to
 
shored              treasures
 
                        divine
                                                what
 
simply              —she—           will
 
become twice 
 
                        three    four      five
 
                                                times
            more
 
is—      error     slip      
 
            knot     tight
 
the final           breeze 
 
            harbors
 
broad back or risen spine
 
                                    Teke peninsula
 
stretch             West of—  
           
            Taurus mountains
 
            Kale                 renamed in 2005
 
            Demre
                       
lies between                 brown valleys
           
            past      perfect
 
                        tense
 
the halyard                   —she— had    longed
 
lined : crease of flesh
 
worn    grief
 
            sadness            a          wakes
 
--keşke—                    bow raises       
 
—she—           nymphs
 
    skin              so briefly
 
—seven years or seven days—           
 
            smuggled
 
            cave or ship    
 
wait to—  guide me
 
                                    bide—  
forgive  this
 
    wish             fills                  Kaleköy’s ancient cistern
                                                            cannot hold
space               pleads                          one more
             day
Keşke XX.

In the wet
 
            aftermath        
 
                        of weather
the river
                        rushes
                       
                        brown
                       
                        beneath
—she—          
           
            drinks
 
rain or              slate
                        white
wine
—she—           turns   
 
to water : a green lexicon
 
here : silence
 
missing  sea
 
stone    fruit
ripe
 
air : apple skin
 
            —she—  
 
inhales  claims
 
—her body—  
 
                                  rivered
 
towards distant
                                  seasons
 
affect                       wrapped
 
breath                      body’s
 
temperature           drops
 
            rise                again
           
            rain—              patterned
 
river     moves through
           
             wake of—  
 
             absence
 
refuses             embankment
 
refuses             soil
           
             ground
 
             into this—  
 
abandoned terroir of—  
 
             meanwhile
 
             —she​—  ​

About the Author

Jennifer A. Reimer, Lise Meitner postdoctoral fellow in American Studies at the University of Graz in Austria, received her PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2011, and her MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco in 2005. Jennifer has numerous scholarly and creative publications. Her first prose poetry book, The Rainy Season Diaries, was released in 2013 by Quale Press. The Turkish translation of The Rainy Season Diaries was released by Şiirden Press (Istanbul) in 2017. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Achiote Press, an independent press dedicated to spotlighting underrepresented authors and artists. A proud California native, Jennifer now lives in Austria. Follow her on FB (Jennifer Andrea) and Instagram (@jenniandreaca). Contact her at: [email protected].
About the Work

"The manuscript from which these poems are taken is titled Keşke, which translates roughly to "if only/I wish" from Turkish to English. The majority of the manuscript consists of one central, long poem, divided into twenty sections. Longing is an important part of “keşke.” In these poems, as with the other keşke poems in the book, I wished to capture the space of longing filling up with the speaker’s own self in the way that bodies fill with breath, tides fill the coast with seawater and pages fill with words. There’s a feminist poetics working in the keşke poems. Despite absence, longing, disconnection, the passage of time, and everything our lives wreck and ruin, the “she” of this poem is active. She “swims,” “reads,” “counts,” “deciphers,” “decodes,” “stars,” “casts,” “shadows” and finally, “imagines.” The power of female imagination turns what is invisible, absent or wrecked into an unequivocal assertion of being."

About the Artist

Salma Ahmad Caller is an Egyptian/British artist and art historian, who was born in Iraq and grew up in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. She now lives in the UK. Salma’s art practice involves creating an imagery of the narratives of body that have shaped her own body and identity across profound cultural divides. Her work is strongly visual but also incorporates text and sound works. It is an investigation of the painful and contradictory mythologies surrounding the female body, processes of exoticization, and the legacy of colonialism as a cross-generational transmission of ideas, traumas, bodies and misconceptions. Her art practice is informed by a Masters in Art History and Theory, having studied medicine, and teaching cross-cultural perspectives at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

About the Art
​

“Expedition Oriental Body is a collage showing Alexandrine Tinné with her servants in Cairo. She was a Dutch female ‘explorer’ in Africa in the late 1800’s, and the first European woman to attempt to cross the Sahara. This work expresses an idea of ingestion, about how Orientalism and exoticization of ‘others' are more than just ideas, they have the power to construct the senses of the body and alter how we experience those so called ‘others’. I became interested in female European travellers like Tinné, whose obsession was the ‘East’ and I am curious about how female explorers views and experiences might have differed from their male counterparts who were part of processes of colonisation and Empire.”
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