micropoetry / ekphrasis / diptych
No Country for Morning Glory
The outwardly unexceptional
spleen liver stomach spilled
intestines writhed
not in the butcher’s market
on dirt road open faced
one could cook these organs
under the sandy scorching sun
but these have names
of soldiers and civilians
too slow to run
too wounded to crawl
too young to know
too strong to hide
they fed on petals
bulbs leaves vines roots
seeds
of morning glory — pretty
the morning they died
the glory of lies
the country of natural rattan
reaped boiled shaved split
weave — lash — weave — lash — weave — lash
hold — bend — hold — bend — hold — bend
spilled spleen liver stomach
cast shadows of pencil marks
on museum floors
ineradicable
southeast asian rattan work
dismissed the clinical wall text
in a shiny north american institution
of art
the basket from the market
grimly pays its respects
morning glory
home
in no country
© Pseu Pending (Seu) 2023
Artist Sopheap Pich
Mama where’s my breakfast?
How does a child see a weedy plant when massive survival depended on it? Born in Cambodia when 2 million died from genocide, the 9-year-old Sopheap Pich escaped to a Thai border refugee camp in 1979 with his family, on foot, when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the brutal Khmer Rouge. For 4 years there, he practiced drawing with twigs on dirt. Eventually, he migrated to the US.
Circling past the gramophone front of the 17 feet long sculpture, I stopped at a rear angle. Oh my goodness, was that what he saw?
Do you see the flower or writhing intestines?
Pich rocks the rattan in Morning Glory. The monumental piece shone in Singapore, 2014, in No Country — an exhibition of scathing social commentaries from South and Southeast Asian contemporary art, at times belittled and often misconceived in the Western art world.
