National Poetry Month Day 5: Franny Choi
Franny Choi is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody, 2014) and the forthcoming Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019), as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She has received fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Helen Zell Writers Program. She is a Kundiman fellow, Senior News Editor at Hyphen Magazine, co-host of the podcast VS, and member of the Dark Noise Collective.
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The Cyborg Watches a Video of a Neo-Nazi Saying Her Name
it’s my face : on the screen
it’s his mouth : my syllables : he points
for the room : they smirk : & she looks so sweet : & the laughing
moves : from the speakers into : my apartment
into aperture : into light : my photograph : my shape
into pinhole : o : they think they’re eating it : my face
they think it’s : melting : on their bulbous tongues : o they
think that’s my name : they’re crushing : like a pill
f : r : into white chalk :
________________________o : i : collapsed : o
o decoy : cloying dipthong : o pixelated song
o wall : of sugar : LCD forcefield : keeping teeth at bay
while i stay : wrapped in blankets : biodegradable
pockmarked : bitter : & hard : o too
hard : for his kind : to pronounce
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Author photograph © Tarfia Faizullah.