Kōan Brink, born and raised in Minnesota, received an MFA from Columbia University and also studied Buddhist texts and social ethics at Union Theological Seminary. They are the author of the chapbook The End of Lake Superior (above/ground, 2021) and the artist’s book What Sleeps under Lacquer (NECK Press, 2022). Brink teaches at The Cooper Union in New York City and lives in Austin, Texas.

Photograph by Augusta X. Thomson.

The Idea of Antarctica

by Kōan Brink

  after Helen Frankenthaler

Now in my dreams
you are just a flat layer
of color. Pinned

to the wall,
it looks uncannily its own


language, cruel trick
of the camera.
People on couch
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