Mantis 18 (Spring 2020)
The Embodied Mind
Franny Choi
Bottom Affect: Awe
En route against a sky-struck backdrop, I
inhale the canyon till I’m filled and thus
become no one: Earth-bit. Big-lunged. Drown
in grains of universe. You make me large
like that: lung-struck. When your mouth
becomes my wet-stemmed brain, I rush into
the world nerves-first. I think: Alive? And that
propels me back into my body like
a black-cold lake; I shudder into bone;
the sleeping child beneath me bolts upright.
Turns out: The mountains were in there all
along, somewhere beyond my rubber mind.
You put your hand inside me, and inside,
a grove of hands un-fisted into eyes.
Its Language an Impenetrable Jungle of Consonants and Vowels
what do you k
now about sej
ong daewang
ng = o = a cl
osed open a c
onstant ring/h
um a consona
nt a con i lost
my train of t
alk k is simpl
e enough but
t vs t’ or wor
se ch vs ch’ o
ne is aspirate
d the other as
piring to win
d winded a ya
eo yeo o yo a
nd so on this
is logical oo
yoo eu ee so
und the way
t h e y l o o k l
i k e m y m o
t h e r ’ s m o
uth laughing
when i say i
t wrong what
does that so
und like you
ask listen you
have to listen
with your act
u a l m o u t h
Real Thing
“I am bored of charging my vibrating toys whenever I am in that mood. I want to feel the real thing inside... Shilling dreadful mantle deliverance side- track. Salt of lemon old boy.”—spam email
Tequila sunrise on a liquid mister vengeance I am him. I want to plug anything but myself into a wall. Hey big one. Until you showed up I opened my mammal tongues. This time I am thinning to winter, millisecond. Slant rind. I want to feel it: a star-chart pulse a bottommed pit an organ grinding orange in the teeth. I am in the mood for bad news tonight. For the wrong kind of burn as it goes down. I am bored of grinning whenever happy, weeping when dangled by the heel. I want to bite the hand that pours, to purl cistern centella asiatica / aardwolf offspring / I will spit my scales into your drink and beg for crit. I want to watch your eyes when my nouns start crowning, when predictive syntax scatters old boys club. Election with an accent get it. Meddle and salt, I’m feeling fraudulent. I’m feeling myself. And blurred and blooming. Like a wrench, in your teeth.
FRANNY CHOI is the author of Soft Science (Alice James Books) and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing). She is a Kundiman Fellow, a 2019 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, and a graduate of the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers Program. She co-hosts the podcast VS alongside fellow poet Danez Smith and is a Gaius Charles Bolin Fellow in English at Williams College.