Lit Angels #31: The Ghosts of Summer

Art by Hayley Quentin, Writing by Hayley Quentin, Erica Stone, Tricia Stirling, Kirsten Elyse

Hayley Quentin
Everything I’ve Ever Known (Ing), 2023 photo by ofstudio

Ghosts of Summer Lit Angels # 3

Kiss by Hayley Quentin

Anethum graveolens, Mobius Strip by Erica Stone

Excerpt from A House That Breathed Her Name by Kirsten Elyse

Why I Have Headaches by Tricia Stirling

Art by Hayley Quentin

Edited by Francesca Lia Block

Hayley Quentin, A Thread, 2023

Kiss
by Hayley Quentin



I am a body
And you are a body too


Standing. Heel, then arch, then joints. 
The fat pads of my toes press down into the Earth, the nails turning white from pressure. I elongate each toe to be sure I’m really there, clinging like the last tether to Earth. Like invisible electricity. The Earth is overly soft and slightly wet. The grass is blades. After, still damp, the palms of my feet will turn red and itch, sparking. In this moment, though, each blade is cold fabric, smooth and shiny like wax. It melts below me, leaving a monoprint of each foot. You only see it after my body has moved, though. An empty coffin. 
It’s familiar, to you. Step through.


I let my body hover over yours, arching
My outline permeable
And you can see my architecture
It is the same shape as yours, shaped by yours




                                                                                                              I am a tombstone
                                                                                          And you are a tombstone too

                           I’m your history and your future. You’ve always turned your back to me.
                         Because you think I am a back. Opaque. Unmoving. But don’t you know?
                              You can’t exile stone. To kiss your own lips do you approach a mirror? 
                                                                                               Or do you just close your mouth.


                                                                                              You think I’m me and you’re you. 
                                                                                           How has that thinking ever got us?




Because I am a body								 And I am body too



Hayley Quentin is an artist creating introspective, resonant works informed by mysticism, wisdom traditions, science-fiction, and human experience. Quentin uses watercolor and colored pencil in an inimitable layering process to form a mythic visual language, a syncretic accretion of her pursuits of the unknowable edge. She was born in Los Angeles, California, during the year of the comet that is her namesake, and received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2023. Recent exhibitions include Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles, The Armory Show in New York, and Loock Galerie in Berlin. "Kiss" is Quentin’s first published writing.