_Growing & Positioning Systems (GPS)_
Aerik Francis
“I’m going look for my body yeah/ I’ll be back real soon”
-Solange Knowles
what is in [this] finite wonder full body but a map
to a home that itches & improvises?
our heads, our hair each keys & paths
to ourselves, layered membrane.
digits five & five tend body expanses
teeming in memory & texture.
read tomography in touch & GPS trust
gut bubbles as butterfly & cardinal.
each sense a direction & each scent a message
desperate to caress trajectory into flesh like lotion.
hair braided bosque & shea into compass rose
crowned in code & cartography, wrapped in
emerald satin. ruby stitched skin blanketed
in pimpled topography & thimbleless thumbs.
armed & equipped barber razor, nocturnal buzzing
grid to scalp to shadow fade legendary:
line-up spans forehead prime meridian,
edges sprout curl & coordinate formation.
dry dandruff flakes fall as bread crumb trails
as routes to roots & bare fruit.
as is lymph node, as erogenous
zones, as knee caps & finger
tips along dermal margins & purple bruises
desperate to impress each & every location:
the bounce & the grease – the crusting
decay of busting bud & zit. the cysts
benign reminders of cycles sublime. what are sweat & tears
but drops of pin? but salt circles? but clepsydra water clocks?
And us but vessels who keep losing
our ways, only finding fresh And intimate questions
––This work was first published by Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review
phaentompoet aka Aerik Francis is a Queer Black & Latinx poet & teaching artist based in Denver, Colorado, USA. They are a Canto Mundo poetry fellow and a The Watering Hole fellow. They are also a poetry reader for Underblong poetry journal and a coordinator with Slam Nuba. Aerik recently released an EP of poetry-songs called SYZYGY (available now on bandcamp), and they have a chapbook titled BODYELECTRONIC forthcoming April 2022 from Trouble Department Press. They have poetry published widely, links of which may be found at their website phaentompoet.com. Find them on IG/TW/youtube/soundcloud @phaentompoet
Learn more about Aerik’s upcoming workshop HUMAN//BODY: BODY POLITICS & BODY POETICS.