Works in preparation for 2018 exhibition at the Jewett Gallery, San Francisco Public Library
Many walls
The sky remains outside, framed between
windows whose hinges no longer turn.
Four palm trees upset the alignment
for a picture. No beach, this, I've
thought about stepping out. To be in
the outer walls, white as pain, is to
be still, outside. A pacemaker keeps
his heart to the beat. The greatest threat
to the new railway tracks cutting through
the pastures of Nagchu, where once
my nomadic mother's fathers's side
spent summer months, is change in the weak
permafrost. And so the tracks are cooled
with heat exchangers. Most nights I place
my ear to his chest, I memorize its
unspoken code. I wait for it to melt for me.
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa
The sky remains outside, framed between
windows whose hinges no longer turn.
Four palm trees upset the alignment
for a picture. No beach, this, I've
thought about stepping out. To be in
the outer walls, white as pain, is to
be still, outside. A pacemaker keeps
his heart to the beat. The greatest threat
to the new railway tracks cutting through
the pastures of Nagchu, where once
my nomadic mother's fathers's side
spent summer months, is change in the weak
permafrost. And so the tracks are cooled
with heat exchangers. Most nights I place
my ear to his chest, I memorize its
unspoken code. I wait for it to melt for me.
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa
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