Building Character

By Kelsey Chen

chinese characters have joints—
they are comprised of
a million dissatisfied, spindly components that recombine into
chromosomal dissonance. traditional or simplified?
click to download.

but it’s impossible because microsoft does not know
that silence is possibly the most temporal of grammars that
I have
no path for the trackpad to imprint
besides
the anxiety of calligraphic hauntings.

I swear there are inconsiderate sea monsters in my keyboard,
but no one believes me.

there are no cubes for me to stack my words
so I sit,

and tell myself I am not bitter.

a wall must be the murderer of monuments.
door_landmark ?

X marks the spot.

I hate how characters sit in boxes. too many borders.
there should be no such thing as a wall,

when this land was never yours to capture.
my body has no walls, only cavities.

his body holds no walls, only infinite space.

—Contributing writer Kelsey Chen’s column, “Body Language,” is a creative column combining visual arts and creative writing to explore the body as a medium of political expression.