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Summer
2005
Krista Franklin
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VISUAL WORKS
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Krista Franklin is a poet,
visual artist and educator who hails from Dayton, OH, and
currently works and resides in Chicago, IL.
Her poems and visual art
have appeared in/on several literary journals and websites,
including Nexus Literary and Art Journal, milk, Warpland,
Obsidian III, nocturnes 2: (re)view of the literary arts,
milkmag.org , ambulant.org, and errataandcontradiction.org
.
She has also been published
in the anthologies The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order
and Bum Rush The Page: a Def Poetry Jam.
She is a Cave Canem fellow,
and was a featured poet in the 2000 New Voices New Worlds
Series in St. Louis, MO.
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| krista
franklin, chicago, poet, poetry, performance art, public schools,
teacher, visual artist, def poetry jam, |
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sixteen
Corridor
of florescent
ricochets off waxy linoleum.
A locker slams.
I am a body of eyes moving through.
One pink, one lavender high top Converse
squeaks soulless against
an army of teenage conformists.
Pebbles of snickers bounce
down the breezeway between buildings.
I
am weird.
Wear
black and listen to The Smiths.
Am black and listen to The Cure.
Sit next to brown boys in penny
loafers and pink polo shirts
who say You’d be pretty,
If you didn’t dress like that.
And You should smile sometimes.
Pretty
is the antichrist.
I
spend nights plotting new
explosions of eighties aesthetic.
Cut holes in the knees of my Levis
367 days before Salt n Pepa
rubberstamp it; carry the derision of peers
on my shoulder like a martyr;
date the whitest boy with
hair the color of limes;
hate the polyester pleated cheerleaders
who lean into mirrors with glistening
tubes of red lipstick, and football
players with mesh-minds;
the infectious insecurity of the popular
bound by tight stitch of designer jeans.
Loathe
the gaze I love.
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