“Mending” by Nadia Arioli 2023

Artist Statement: I like Wittgenstein’s idea that the limit of our language is the limit of our world, but I am not sure sure how true that is. I fear that because we want so desperately for language to be this magical, healing substance, we are inclined to see language as doing things that it cannot. Nonetheless, I imaged a language that could mend, could heal. Language that could fix holes in pants as easily as it might stop bombs. This excursion, is, of course, as fake as a copy of a copy of a copy. Ersatz healing with ersatz language on ersatz objects with ersatz color. Isn’t it pretty to think so?

Nadia Arioli is the cofounder and editor in chief of Thimble Literary Magazine. Arioli’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net three times and for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Cider Press Review, Rust + Moth, McNeese Review, Penn Review, Mom Egg, and elsewhere. Essays have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Hunger Mountain, Heavy Feather Review, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere. Artwork has appeared in Permafrost, Kissing Dynamite, Pithead Chapel, Rogue Agent, and Poetry Northwest. Arioli’s forthcoming collections are with Dancing Girl Press and Fernwood Press.