4 Poems by Hana Jiang

Artist statement

I see things as a dreamer seeing things in dreams

Things in dreams are

                                       Here and there, anywhere

                                       Solitary, remote, vaguely, disarrayed

                                       Connected, disconnected

                                     Disappearing soon after they appear

                                       Cluelessly, strangely, distortedly, quietly

                                     Vanishing with no trace no repeats

I see dreams as a magic pouch collecting things

That things in the pouch are

                                                Fear

                                                        Despair

                                                                    Repression

                                                                                    Angst

                                                                                                Yearning

                                                                                    Gaiety

                                                                      Intimacy

                                                         Debauchery

                                              fantasy

I dream of incredible elements

These elements

                               Interact

                                               Overlap

                                                                 Iterate

                 The history of sediment

                  The culture of exotic

                  The nature of ubiquity

                  The heaven of absurdity

My dreams reflect my concerns of

Home/Family/Belonging

They break into images

The images fall into montages

The montages orchestrate my dreams

Of things

Of pouch

Of history

Of culture

Of nature

Of heaven

Of images

Of montages

And me

I am the dreamer

I grab things to my pouch

I make disconnected scenes connected

I place elements of all kinds in my paintings


So, I am a creator

I am an unordinary creator

A WELL


Billion years hiding deep

unstopped, unshaped, unformed

unceasingly, persistently, infiltrated

it flows underneath

The cracks the blood veins the continuous thirst

thank the thousand years wisdom

that puddles it spades it wreathes it

the water that is made stay always

Quietly seeps and seeps

it’d be neither full nor less

the resource of infinitude

Ancestors, descendants, and

all lives that can rely on

the wisdom

of

thousand years – 

A well


A recipe of insomnia

I am the one who is good at

Making sorts of recipes –

A mood of melancholy

A source of inquiety

A disturbance of novelty

Plus, an all-time signature piece –

INSOMNIA, my pride

I heir the nerve from my mother

I learned to create ingredients from my father

I distribute the elements to my son

I develop the old recipe to the newer –

1, restlessness

2, excitement

3, daydreams

4, stress

5, anxiety

6, depress

7, annoyance

One night

Son jumps out to my screen

He presses a button of my vulnerability

I get up and start, again,


Making a recipe of insomnia

Memory, The Heart – Frida Kahlo

A heart is broken

A heart is unbroken

An unbreakable heart jumps out

Now a hole on the chest

Like a hollow on a tree trunk

Standing alone

With one foot soaked in salt water

Swelled like a canoe

Brought from the childhood

And one is resting on the shore

An arrow penetrates the hole with an angel riding on

When a heart grows bigger on the ground

Memories unclench to call myriad of molecules

Aches squeeze out tears

The remote adolescent naivete

Echoes ongoing sweet bitters

The cost is unknown

For the subtlety being flattered

The reckless blood

Merge to the bitter salt


While metal pole recording the event