_Academia Abecedarium_

 

ambition arrested – always again – antagonisms
           because – battle banter – brutal – brittle – belief bereft

calloused – cornered constantly – collision corridors
           digressions – diploma duress – departmentalized

endurance – enigmatic – erasure education – error
           falsified flags – flagrant fervor – feel fissures

gnawing – graduated gravity – generalizing geography
           hue heuristics – horror hermeneutics – holed

inside – inked inculcations – intricate illusions
           jammed juxtapositions – jumbled justifications

kettled – kritik kingdom – knockout kick – knit kinetic
           lose logic – loose legislation – lemoned – lesioned – lewd

messy mind multitudinous – molding – murmurations
           noisy numbness – needling notifications – nullification

ongoing onslaught – opining obtuse – ornamental
           placated power – protruding privilege – penetrating

quick quiet query – quit quota – quixotic – quilled
           riled – reeling research – rule riddled – relinquishment

slithering sleuthing – stunted strike – slash studious – stache
           ticking time – tenure tower – teething tension – tithing

urging understanding – umbrage undertow – universal
           vexation – virtue vampirism – veiled value – veer

where wonder withers – weeping – willows wallowing
           xeroxed xanax – xenogamies – xylotomies – x-filed

yearly yesterday – yearning yore – yield yolk – yoke
           zoological – zoned zealotry – zillionaire – zapped – zestless

 

 

 

_Competitive Edges_

 

We can be

so sharp

 

& so blunt–

I hate that

 

this is about us

instead of busting

 

the damn doors

down– all of us

 

who go out kicking

our feet through doors–

 

access & excess for egress

opening & locking behind–

 

of course you & I

are special– but

 

anything can happen

after doors close–

 

 

 

_Grateful_

 

 

For doors, knocked: For grounding words: Thank you – I’m both

grateful and floored–

 

Often words hit the wall & smack the floor: After all a wall is a 

closed door: A door is only a door during entry: It flees like

fleeting keys: So temporary this freedom of floor–

 

There is a great door: A great gate: A grey heart: A cage of rib &

flower: Though no pretty metaphor: They lock They break They

bar They floor: Skeleton keys locked: In a frame of muscle &

blood flow: They open up: Deliberative body holds the floor–

 

Doors can be pretty: The elite keep pretty pitiful gates: Paid &

paned & painful & paint drips to stain the floor: They wall bodies:

They look through my frame: They want me walked-atop or

buried-beneath floor–

 

I too fear the lock & knob: But I know of the imposition of

gratefulness through the door: It becomes a great that grates: A

hard pill to swallow: A hard pillow called floor–

 

At the end: At the beginning: Ubiquitous: A door: A room: More

room for another door: I’m only truly grateful for great gates:

Rubbled walls, floorless, unceiling: If I must gatekeep, I must keep

the gate a door never closed & always open: A way out–

 

There is an exit: Close: Sealed by a door: Stretch the threshold:

Find that door you need unlocked: Feet unwithheld: No more

ceilings: No more floors–

 

 

 

_Casually Cruel_

 

If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.
—Zora Neale Hurston
I complained
Until
[silence]
Until

 

I was filed away [
I was all bureaucratic processes & signed forms
Intake interview, informal interview before the formal
Viewing internal bullet point wounds ]

 

[Please believe my credentials]
[Please believe my character]
[Please believe my complaint]
[Please believe me]

 

I complained until

 

I was the complaint

 

I complained until

 

[I was the silence]

 

 

[ … ]

[If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.]

 

it was a pleasure to burn
down my temple i bet

the house, lost the house
cat in ugly divorce

proceedings, regressed
down to the soil i died

a smile stitched closed
to stifle my horrid cackle

how easy we meld the sound
of crying and laughter into one

Schrodinger’s schadenfreude
wincing contortion perceived as euphoria

i screamed for help i became
a helpless scream a spectacle a symptom

fed static feedback
fed tilted beak, backwash

forced to release my dopamine
like bred cattle made juicy

meat to s-laughter to butcher to swallow down
with bloodgrin chuckle

[If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.]
Until
Until
Until

[ … ]1

1 I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me.
—Zora Neale Hurston

 

 

Aerik Francis is a Queer Black & Latinx poet based in Denver, Colorado, USA. Aerik is the author of the chapbook BODYELECTRONIC (Trouble Department 2022). Aerik is the recipient of poetry fellowships from Canto Mundo and The Watering Hole, and is also a Winter Tangerine workshop alum, and the recipient of the Amiri Baraka Scholarship for Naropa University’s 2019 Summer Writing Program and the Robert Hayden Scholarship for Stockton University’s 2021 Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway. Aerik is a poetry reader for Underblong poetry journal, and is event coordinator for Slam Nuba. Aerik has poetry published widely in print and on the net. Selected by Dorothy Chan as the winner of the 2022 chapbook contest, MISEDUCATION is forthcoming from New Delta Review in 2023.