Michael Imossan & Rae White
MY BODY IS A STORM INSIDE A STORM
Self defence has me warring with myself; tucking my belly beneath the
Sly Laughters trailing the slabs of flesh heaped on my bones. My mirror says
I eat too much. Her words semble that of a man on the bus, though a little bit
Euphemistic. I dab my body in starvation to see how beauty snuggles under the
Pores of a thing wriggling in hunger. I watch as it shrivels into the safety of
compliments. Today, a sunflower kisses the emptiness of my belly when a man at the
Train station called me sexy and dies. Erosion is the washing away of the flesh by
Hunger until shoulder bones protract themselves as tree branches for black birds to perch.
I have thrown my body into a wind strumming with the insignia of erosion. I do not care if
I rust —where rust is the eroding of the skin. Last month, my sister said my body was an
an onion of storms —a storm inside of a storm. To defend myself, I must tame it with
The ruggedness of not eating and not eating and not eating.
A Contortion, 2021
monotype
4x6"
I’ve always loved drawing bodies. They’re so expressive and individual, and exploring how we inhabit our bodies is something I’ve found myself doing more and more over the years as I have been navigating experiences with gender presentation and chronic pain. I like the idea that I can represent people in/as their bodies as something extraordinary, visceral, and almost mythical.
What attracts me to drawing other people, especially live, is that I get to experience someone else, thoroughly inhabiting their body as they’re modelling. And I get to experience that in combination with the bodily experience of drawing with pastels, which are messy and flighty, and with monotype, where you’re pressing and scraping and wiping at ink without any clue of what the final print will look like until you lift it up. I get to physically wrestle with these materials much in the same way that I feel like my mind wrestles with my body when I’m in pain or feeling socially dysphoric, and getting to navigate this mind/body problem when using materials to capture someone else’s body helps me to better navigate it when it’s myself and my own body’s looks and limitations.
Rae White
Michael Imossan is a writer keen on expressing himself through all genre of literature, he loves being in class —whether as a teacher or a student, he loves being in class. He is a joint winner of the Shuzia Redemption Poetry contest, he is a winner of the poetrycolumn-nnd Weekly poetry contest. He has been longlisted for the Nigeriannewsdirect poetry prize 2020. He is a second place winner of the Letters To The Lion Of JADA Spoken word poetry competition. He has been a judge of the FASA spoken word slam. His works have been/are forthcoming on Inertia Teens Magazine, Small Leaf Press, FieryScribe Review, poetrycolumn-nnd. Also, he has been interviewed and published by The Daily Trust Newspaper. Tweet him via @michael_imossan.
Rae White lives and works in Toronto, Canada on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. They have a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Ottawa and a Certificate in Pre-Animation & Illustration from Algonquin College. Their work investigates body and identity as a place of mythos, navigation, construction, and becoming. They can be found on instagram @half_headed or at raewhiteart0.webnode.com