Writing Toward Healing
N C L R ONLINE
53
I say selfishly before the final island disappears let’s tell all our stories – every one that lives in the static on every station. Let’s head for the lemon trees pluck the fruit pluck yesterday pluck ancient history pluck today. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
In that distance the past glistens
the floating house grows its own waves. Yesterday’s hanging limbs say don’t let this be the last memory of me head for the trees make an offering. Let us swim. If the water is always moving it can’t be a thing we can call water then turn away. The waves lap at the door the way an opened letter tucked in a drawer in a previous life wants another tongue.
Losing ground, 2015–2019 (mixed media on paper, mounted on canvas and wood, 50x44) by Kenn Kotara
The sky swallows their story to feed it to next life clouds. If the sky is never finished nothing is.
Louisiana native KENN KOTARA lives in Asheville, NC. He earned a BFA in Graphic Design and an MFA in Studio Art at Louisiana Tech University. The image featured uses geometry, map diagrams, and Braille to depict an abstract image of Louisiana’s loss of coastal land due to levee construction, the oil and gas industry, and weather. His work appears in numerous private, corporate, and public collections, such as the Asheville Art Museum, Louisiana State Museum, and the US Embassy, Jamaica. See more of his art on his website.