i hated the calamari
he loves that i didn’t like the calamari
i get to not like it
i get to not eat it
i get to have my autonomy
i’m actually adored
Body Poetic is a collaboration with art critic and curator Richard Speer begun spontaneously as an intimate email exchange of poems, letters, and photographic portraits. Together we confront beliefs and assumptions related to the aging body from my dysmorphic, self-critical, and eating-disordered perspective. In dressing rooms I cringe before mirrors but in my own bathroom vanity indulge in erotic and poetic narcissistic fantasies. Love itself is a mirror, a sacred grove, a place to undress and unapologetically embrace taboos. The portraits and poems celebrate transgression and shatter the silence of shame.