poems by Jeevika Verma illustrated by Selly Sallah
from the poet: From sharing a desk to sharing art: scale(s) is a collaboration with Selly, fellow artist, best D.C. friend. I wrote six pieces to close my three months as an intern in Washington, my last three months in the United States, the last three months of the year. The three months where I distinctly evolved through fluoxetine, immigration blues, an assault, and loneliness channelled into collaborative art. Selly silently but confidently stuck by me throughout these months of learning/unlearning. We both shared a deep sense of longing to create, to collaborate, to close out a full year of great uncertainty. Selly took my words and transformed my pain into a form so visually surreal, only a true friend and artist could have done so. I am so fortunate to be able to end 2017 and this chapter of my life with this project, with her.
—Jeevika
from the illustrator: When I met Jeevika, I was in a bit of a creative rut. I suffered from the distinctive sense of post-graduate anxiety about what to do next in life, and my drawings were characterized by a frenetic and unsettled ambiguity that mirrored my confusion. In our short three months interning together, Jeevika and I grew close. My existential questions about what I would do in the future found a foil in her careful determination to become a writer and stay in the US. In reading her poems, I admired her ability to condense such a chaotic period of her life into simple yet incredibly vivid language. The more I consumed them, the more my brain began to conjure surrealist imagery, combining the seemingly disparate elements of the poems into cohesive illustrations. Living with these poems for a few weeks and creating from the solitude and unease they evoke helped me to understand and process many of my own feelings. I hope they will do the same for you. —Selly
1. solo My snake likes my ear, looks like a silver line, is mine like a pet-peeve growing in my bed. I feed it neon screens and saltwater long into the night, it turns fat and healthy and shudders in the new cold. The clocks go back an hour to find a pool of blood in my sheets.
2. National Portrait Gallery My snake likes to enter my ear looking like silver lining, is mine like my mother’s silhouette crouching in the dark. I sense it in the corner, in the pair of pastel eyes, in Sylvia’s conserved ponytail. I sense it in the torsos dissolving in the conditioned air.
3. a mugging My snake eye likes to get to my mind through my ear, lies silverly charming in the grass, wants to be mine like a broken thermometer stuck in my mouth. It wants nothing to do with sense, with the thickness of a wallet. A photo of my grandpa before he passed now lays in a dumpster somewhere, my goodbye-poem eaten by the rats.
4. intern housing My snake in the grass likes to dance without limbs or eyelids of its own, wants to be mine like a quarterly space sore with shame and fading red wine stains. A small pile of complaints and crushes by the staircase and all my hair brushed softly under the bed.
5. no smoking My snake wants my limbs, wants my eyelids, won’t be still like a certain type of car-sickness pulling at my lobes. A pre-existing condition for a post-graduate affair. I bury the letters of promise in the interned sandbox that I wrapped in sweaters before getting on the plane.
6. directions on how to get home My snake winds inside my mind wins me over, won’t be still like a flagged email that houses a one-way plane ticket. Ever seen a flamingo dancing in space? Ever seen space? Ever felt a feather fall from your skin only to stay afloat a centimeter away? I tried to love us well.
learn more at: jeevikav.com sellyart.wordpress.com