"Quarantine" by Franny Choi

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 5, 2018   Quarantine   Franny Choi

Because I did not have to smell the cow's fear, because I did not have to pin the man, watch his eyes go feral, because I did not have to drag the stones that formed in the child's body, because I did not sheathe my hands in dank soil, or skirt the machine's battering, the needles knitting my lower back, because when the factory collapsed I smelled no smoke, and no one made me kneel at the cop's boots and count the pulse slowing beside me as every sound soured, because my hands have never had to resist being comforted by the warmth of blood, because the plastic- wrapped meat and the mousetraps, because my job was to stay clean and thankful and mostly imaginary, I have been           stealing what little I can:                               onions.  sandpaper.  handfuls of skin. the dumpster's metal groan.  hurried breath.  hot knives.            Copyright © 2018 Franny Choi. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "This poem came out of a conversation with the poet Ilya Kaminsky, during which he said something like, 'Capitalism distances us from our senses.' It made me think about what potential for resistance might be hidden in the sensory, what minor acts of resistance we might find there. I hope (while avoiding the suggestion that smelling onions, etc., can be a substitute for material, social change) this poem can open a little aperture of hope on the days we feel crushed by our inability to break out of the larger systems." —Franny Choi   Franny Choi is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody, 2014) and the chapbook Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan, cohost of the poetry podcast VS, and a member of the Dark Noise Collective. Her second collection, Soft Science, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2019.     Photo credit: Tarfia Faizullah Poetry by Choi   Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017) "Shared Plight" by Kamilah Aisha Moon "Humanimal [I want to make a dark mirror out of writing]" by Bhanu Kapil "One Child Has Brown Eyes" by Marilyn Chin January Guest Editor: Kaveh Akbar   Thanks to Kaveh Akbar, author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Akbar and our other guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038