Art: Not Art

Jason Wee

What will we choose of

the twenty-first, a migrant

corpse from which passage,

how will we decide

if its barbedwire is

typical or partisan

if the callus over

the blistered heel is

injury or sculpture?

All over town 

art history catalogues

flung out windows and

catalogues of violence

their loosened pages 

snowing the sky. 

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We came to see

the stars, navigation

from homeless to stranded

​

for those forsaking land

a consolation still made

for us. Eyes up on

​

the fluttering amnesia

the collector turned

to me this is art.

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Jason Wee is an artist, a writer, an editor at Softblow poetry journal. He's edited numerous books, including Boring Donkey Songs, by Lee Wen, and SQ21: Singapore Queers in the 21st Century. He lives in New York and Singapore.