Jin-Ah Kim

“All art is quite useless.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“...[It comes] from so deep inside you, you cannot locate the source of the pain … The muscles of your jawbone go berserk, so that you bite the inside of your mouth and your jaw locks and the pain throbs. … Your spinal column stiffens so that you can hardly move your head or your neck and sometimes your back bends like a bow and you cannot stand up. … You ache with restlessness, so you feel you have to walk, to pace. And then as soon as you start pacing, the opposite occurs to you; you must sit and rest. Back and forth, up and down you go … you cannot get relief …”
― Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

“I travel your body, like the world,

your belly is a plaza full of sun,

your breasts two churches where blood

performs its own, parallel rites,

my glances cover you like ivy,

you are a city the sea assaults,

a stretch of ramparts split by the light

in two halves the color of peaches,

a domain of salt, rocks and birds,

under the rule of oblivious noon,

dressed in the color of my desires,

you go your way naked as my thoughts,

I travel your eyes, like the sea,

tigers drink their dreams in those eyes,

the hummingbird burns in those flames,

I travel your forehead, like the moon,

like the cloud that passes through your thoughts,

I travel your belly, like your dreams,

your skirt of corn ripples and sings,

your skirt of crystal, your skirt of water,

your lips, your hair, your glances rain

all through the night, and all day long

you open my chest with your fingers of water,

you close my eyes with your mouth of water,

you rain on my bones, a tree of liquid

sending roots of water into my chest”
― Octavio Paz, Piedra de Sol = Sunstone

“A sudden presence like a burst of song,

like the wind singing in a burning building,

a glance that holds the world and all

its seas and mountains dangling in the air,

body of light filtered through an agate,

thighs of light, belly of light, the bays,

the solar rock, cloud-colored body,

color of a brisk and leaping day,

the hour sparkles and has a body,

the world is visible through your body,

transparent through your transparency,”
― Octavio Paz Solórzano, Piedra de Sol = Sunstone