THE PRICE OF THE DROUGHT RUSHES THROUGH MY HANDS
Michelle Lin
INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
(1) What diasporas do you write into, and what diasporas do you write to create?
The moths outside the living room window, then the silent and blue light of another morning, alive. A mother's sudden pinch on my belly, a father's disgust and my shame and pride after shearing my hair. A cut phone line. Flags burning by wrecked windows. The cocoon and the chrysalis and the shapes inside softly turning. The possibility after desolation.
(2) Where does this piece land within the greater history, body, and/or evolution of your work?
I'm currently relearning how to trust the fragments and uncertainty in my poetry. I want to write poems that I don't quite understand and I want them to teach me.
(3) How do "xenolithic edges” show up in your piece?
Like memory and the formation of identity, this poem resists a stable shape, its fragments spilling into each other like a flood. Truth, dreams, and time collapse in an imagined plane, where it feels like my relationship to the past can almost shift.
MICHELLE LIN IS A MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST AND AUTHOR OF THE POETRY COLLECTION "A HOUSE MADE OF WATER" (SIBLING RIVALRY PRESS, 2017). THEIR WRITING AND ART PRACTICE ARE RITUALS OF GRIEF, REGENERATION, AND SURVIVAL WHILE LIVING WITHIN IMPERIAL CORE. THEY LOOK TO NATURAL FIBER, THE LAND, PLANT AND ANIMAL RELATIVES AS GUIDES FOR TRANSMUTATION. AS AN ARTS WORKER AND COMMUNITY BUILDER LIVING ON UNCEDED OHLONE LAND, THEY HELP CULTIVATE SPACES OF POSSIBILITY FOR DIASPORIC AND QUEER ARTISTS THROUGH ARTOGETHER, KEARNY STREET WORKSHOP, AND THE ARTISTS' ADAPTABILITY CIRCLES.