AFTER AI WEIWEI DROPS TWO HAN DYNASTY URNS

In the account I retrieve the ceramic remains of the two ceremonial urns used and destroyed for Ai Weiwei's 1995 piece Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn. I gather their dust and materials in a clothbound sack in preparation for a procession through the banyan forest of my dreams. The trees listen, then offer their views. The wind interprets for me what I must consider necessary and sacred. Like any worthy translation, I can accept authorship of only what a witness claims to be true, even though their testimony is an anomaly. In allegory, the ceramic pieces are moved towards their mother tree. In action, they speak in the plain language of seed dispersal through the banyan’s aerial roots, through prayer’s ordinary ability to uproot conditions. When I untie my cloth sack the ceramic pieces are released to the pathways of their epiphytic nature. They have transcended their material form by becoming agents of germination, or intuition. They molt and adhere to the trunks, branches, and leaves. Over time ceramic pieces are integrated into their mother environment, reunited with its disrupted lineage. Gradually, across space and reason, the pieces and dust of these broken urns adorn the banyan trees. I want to know if their ornamentation is a kind of portal but my eye is incapable of registering the spiritual opening so I have to imagine other sensory possibilities, which exhausts me. A scent is a medium for pause, a sound is a name for a rose. The tension of a line is described as a dewdrop waiting to fall or a needle suspended in the air. Upon waking: What did the two ceremonial urns know of devotion?

DOOR OR TONGUE

In the dream I was covered by the fabric of the text. 
In form it resembled a lion and had the features of a hedgehog.
The spirits feared they might be engraved in books, and that is why they howled at night.
You shaped the water for answers to questions I could not yet formulate.
After sunset, I gather my belongings.

Catherine Chen is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary poet and performer. Encompassing poetry, video, collaboration, and modes of installation, their work explores the relationship between textuality, mythology, and material histories. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection Beautiful Machine Woman Language (Noemi Press, 2023).