India June is an artist and writer living in Buffalo, New York. She works primarily with paper ephemera rooted in the practice of correspondence. Through her rigorous letter-writing, her envelopes and postcards have made their way to several dozen countries over the last seven years.

winged things, the end of june (july 2021)

fig. i — mixed media collage
> [“Crow Song” (1974)] I raised the banner // which decreed Hope // and which did not succeed // and which is not allowed. // Now I must confront the angel // who says Win, // who tells me to wave any banner // that you will follow
> [“Dream: Bluejay or Archeopteryx” (1969)] there was an outline, man // surfacing, his body sheathed // in feathers, his teeth // glinting like nails, fierce god // head crested with blue flame
> [from “Two-Headed Poems” (1978)] Birds // eat their words, we eat // each other’s words, hearts, // what’s // the difference?
{all by Margaret Atwood}
fig. ii — mixed media collage

fig. ii — mixed media collage
> what am i?
> the side of your heart that is aching
> i can fill this void
> in this long life, it’s like i’m fading into ashes
> i’m exhausted by everything
> yet the resentment would confine me
> in my dreams, i’m drowsy again
{lyrics from Blue and Swimming Pool, some translated to english, all by Taeyong}
fig. iv — scan (recoloured) from Birds of America (1917) - Thomas Gilbert Pearson, The University Society

recipients series i, envelopes 1-7
mixed media collage
(june 2021)


Everyone's stupid while they're alive (april 2017)

november.it was easy to ask for a solution. simple to plead in insinuations for an understanding, one single answer to the constantly projecting reel of questions i had.what happened?i am sitting across from you, the physical incarnation of my trust issues, and it is so easy to allow my gaze to drift to your left. the picture on the opposite wall greeting me in a way your cold, blank stare never would.this feels like a funeral.your chair screeches across floorboards and i might know that no one is watching me descend six feet below ground, and yet i feel every stranger looking intently as the blood seeps from my collar because i can't stop scratching at the skin that feels too tight.i want to be guillotined like charlotte corday.the rip in my tights which was snagged on the car door a week before is a gaping flesh wound. the quickness of my pulse is a heart attack. my eyelids are floodgates. my cheeks, a furnace. the acid in my throat, burning me from the inside out.i want to be burned at the stake like joan of arc.i was sure this would be fine. easy. the honesty was a rotting bandage you should have ripped off years before. i didn't matter. i just wish i hadn't cried. i wish i hadn't stood in the street and felt myself hanging by a thread.i want to be strung from the gallows like bridget bishop.it felt like a funeral.

january.the soft smell of grass hissed past me oncefor a split secondand i inhaled until i thought i wouldn't be able to ever breathe in again and it filled my lungs to the point of poppingsnappingleaving me just a ribcage with veins intertwined and blood without flowlike when you pricked my heart with a pin last spring to sew in all the things you hated about meyet all i smelledwas snowand concrete.

february.whathappenedtome?

march.this poem is called To Regret
and it is alternatively titled: I WILL CRUSH MY EMOTIONS INTO FLAT PANELS OF NOTHING LIKE A TRASH COMPACTER
it is envy.
too much to let me breathe steadily.
i know this, and when i look to you it washes over me
thick, heavy, slow-moving —
molasses through my bleeding fingertips
eyes coaxed in corners
by the thin shield of sleep,
when i allow myself to drown
in lost memory.
i regret this.


lineart (2016-2017)

september 2016

april 2017

may 2017

may 2018

may 2016

september 2017


journal flipthroughs

completed may 2017

completed april 2019


other writing


themed collage

analog collage mixed media postcards (september 2020)

photo, liquid sealant, plastic wrap, paint marker, acrylic (april 2020)

analog collage mixed media postcards (october 2018)