emBODY poetry

Below is a series of stills from Mehta’s "emBODY poetry" series in 2019 and 2020, in which models who are traditionally underrepresented and/or hypersexualized in the modern western art world have one of Mehta’s poems painted on their nude form in a safe public setting. EmBODY poetry is an act of reclamation, and a witness of this process for the audience.

Bodies of Water

We are made of the ocean,
spiked with salt and crackling
bones half gone to sand. Within us
is the whole wide sea, swimming
fish and fragile reefs. Sirens
aren’t made up, they tuck
and fold between our ribs—call us
to our depths with songs
that ring of memories. We tell children,
Never turn your back to the waves
not for the unknown, surprise
tsunamis and creeper currents, but for all
the knowing stored
like sunken chests within our marrow.
What goes challenger deep
rises again. In every particle
of our everything, the calcium
that builds our skeleton, we remember
the brine that came before, and all
the leagues of which we’ll go.

All the Ways

Know that

just because we’re quiet
doesn’t mean we aren’t railing inside.
We ate herring in red coats and I told you
all the ways I’d kill myself, how
your lips were wilder than the moon.
It’s a lie

that we’re born alone, die alone.
We arrive

through slick thighs,
wet bellies, and maybe
we’ll never see our mothers again. Maybe
she’ll stick to us like burned
batter all our lonely lives. And we’ll die

with all those lovers, gone
mothers, animals that licked our hurts
knotted like stowaways
in the most secret
desolate chambers of our hearts.
They escort us, shaking

straight into the luminous.

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Jessica Mehta is the poet and performance artist behind these pieces. The photographer for the male model is Erin Smith. The photographer for the female model is Chintan Mehta. Both have provided permissions to publish their photographs. You can learn more about her work at www.jessicamehta.com.