MAY WE UNWASH OUR BRAINS: MAY 2025 PHAENTOMPOET NEWSLETTER
In this newsletter, I talk about my forthcoming poetry album, my collaboration with Angie Ráfaga for a musical version of MISEDUCATION, upcoming events, and notes on citizenship and music
MAY WE UNWASH OUR BRAINS: MAY 2025 PHAENTOMPOET NEWSLETTER
In this newsletter, I talk about my forthcoming poetry album, my collaboration with Angie Ráfaga for a musical version of MISEDUCATION, upcoming events, and notes on citizenship and music
On “Citizen”
I wept listening to one of my poem-songs today. “Citizen” – here is the link to the written version, published with The Rumpus during National Poetry Month in 2023.
(And while I’m here, I’ll recommend five poems from this year’s series from Harmony Holiday, Sanam Sheriff, Hayan Charara, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, and Naomi Shihab Nye. It’s a poetry newsletter afterall, so let’s begin with poems.)
I should first note that this poem “Citizen” has nothing to do with Claudia Rankine’s book of the same name. Rather, it is an extended meditation on the last paper I wrote in grad skool before I decided to dip. It was a paper about Thomas Hobbes’ book Leviathan and a curiosity about food and consumption. It’s hard for me to really explain my theory of consumption, but for the purpose of the paper, I wanted to track notions of consumption. Where I ended up was the realization that the commonwealth, as a Leviathan, was eating everything while the people who made up the commonwealth were simply lucky to be alive. A commonwealth, in Hobbes’ conception, begins in surplus, which is a euphemistic way of saying begins with conquest and pillaging. It is the body politic that eats, not the people with bodies who make it up. In other words, the only bodily concern of the state is precisely the body politic: more directly, a citizen does not have a body.
As a theorist, these kinds of claims require more warrants, more evidence, more explanation, more source material, more scholarly discussions. But as a poet, this notion can be more easily explored through language and rhetoric.
I also was considering some of the work of my colleagues. I’ll actually cite her here: I was specifically thinking of the work of political scientist Angela Ocampo and her work on senses of belonging among immigrants. If you perform a search engine search (really trying not to use brand names as common nouns or verbs) with her name and “belonging” as keywords, a number of academic studies she has performed and published as articles pop up. This notion was fascinating to me, to have a sense of belonging in a country as an immigrant. And Ocampo’s and other’s studies on this topic is certainly important scholarly work to create a basis for policy changes toward immigrant rights.
Thinking of her work, I wondered about my own sense of belonging in a country, specifically me as a Black citizen of this country via birthright with two parents who are also citizens. Mostly, I thought of the ways I don’t feel like I belong. I thought of all the rights and resources that I long for, even still, especially as the welfare state is massively removed/privatized. And I realized, no matter how much I “felt” or “sensed” I belonged, I was still left longing for more, I was still a long way from belonging.
Combining these two ideas, I realized that, inherently, a citizen is rendered perpetually in a state of longing for belonging, precisely defined by the extent that non-citizens long for belonging and the extent that a commonwealth will inherently create borders and distance to belonging. The poem, then, becomes a critique of the notion of citizenship: to what extent are we truly offered rights/resources/belonging in a state that refuses to recognize our bodies? And if this is true of citizens, what of non-citizens?
The poem, as a result, is an elongated song, an incantation to summon the body, our bodies, back into presence and light, since they have been effectively exiled from the state and the notion of citizen. I didn’t realize the magic, the incantation aspect of this poem until I started reading it aloud and felt the energy of it.
So I wept listening to it this morning. I was reviewing the songs another time and was scrolling social media. Right at the part “O body” I saw the latest footage in Gaza– photos of babies and infants severely malnourished and literally starving, skin and bones. I saw today’s aftermath of an Israeli bombing at one of the last functioning restaurants in Gaza, 25 people killed in less than a minute, their bodies among rubble and blood– O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body. O body.
I, probably like many people, try to scroll past the carnage when it comes up. I can’t bear it, can’t bear to see such horrors. But I do see it, and sometimes I force myself to see it, to bear witness to what my citizenship to the USA costs others and myself. I did also see today a video of a man in Gaza cooking canned beef with spices in a demolished building and eating it with a smile, yes. I did also see a video today of a clown clapping and dancing to music for a group of children outside of tents, with many children smiling and clapping, yes. And I’m glad: it’s so important to see resilience, living, maybe even what one may call joy (I struggle with whether or not to use that word. Here, indeed, joy is resistance, yes. But mostly it is just trying to live, trying to find presence, just trying to find a way forward in the midst of complete horror). I also saw a Gazan child wrap grass in pita to eat. It is important to see everything, the full picture. To see the aftermath of bombings and restricted food and water and shelter and medicine and aid. To see it all because everything is being shown to us through such dire circumstances and high risk, captured with technology made also thru western exploitation, transmitted thru e-sims paid for by mutual aid campaigns across the world.
I also wanted to start this newsletter with this poem because this is the poem that convinced me to make music. The sound and the rhyme easily lent themselves toward music. And so it became the first song of the project. With the Syzygy EP already made, I had more confidence in creating a soundscape for the poems. And y’all may or may not hear my other two music projects: the Sorrow Songs EP (reproduced) and Parallel (I had always joked that I wanted to make an R&B album, and then 2022 I had significant romantic experiences that opened up poetry portals, and I turned a lot of those poems into songs with beats) are solid projects with solid drafts but I hate the recordings and the mixing. So as much as I love these songs and could honestly perform all of them right now (and should go to open mics…) i’m scared! (I’ve performed my music a few times and it went alright! Even still…) Anymore poetry is such a crutch because when an opportunity to sing comes I chicken-out and just do poems. Anyway, I mention all of this because I had a number of beats that I had originally thought would be for these projects but instead became what now is PRXPAGANDA (For instance, my poemsong “Casually Cruel” used to be a song called “Plummet”; “Superlative” used to be a song called “BodyTalk”; etc). So “Citizen” really set a tempo and created space. That plus the constant years of form-rejections/fancy-shortlist-rejections of my book manuscript BODYPOLITIC and the urgency of these poems and my bitterness at the poetry industry…well it was necessary for me to create something that I could share on my own time and my own terms. So here we are.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Today’s/This month’s newsletter was supposed to be just about promoting my poetry album and some poetry events I have coming up. But of course, the whole point of these projects is to bring us back to the world, the world we bear and bear witness to. I wanna apologize for my long-windedness and digressions, but like, that’s the whole point of this space. If I can’t be longwinded here, then where? If I can’t digress here, then where? If I can’t rant here, then where? So yeah, just an acknowledgement and thank you for sticking around.
I’m hosting two shows the next two Saturdays in May, a double feature of Prxpaganda & Miseducation. I’m calling it the PHAENTOM BRAINWASH because both projects have directly to do with mental manipulation by the state– the extent to which I accept my brainwashing, the extent to which I participate in brainwashing, and the extent to which I attempt to un-wash my brain, to let it be as messy as it is. I can’t say that I don’t have an agenda, that I don’t hope to affect how people think and feel about these kinds of state institutions and their roles in oppression. But I also believe in open interpretation of art (it’s why I love wordplay and puns)– that you as a reader add to the art and discussions and that your experience and positions and identities and visions matter just as much as mine do. So I hope that these projects allow for emotions and movement more than simply agreeing/disagreeing.
I am hosting a listening party on Saturday May 10, 2025 in Denver at 617 E 22nd street (next door to TeaLee’s and across the street from The Pearl). The aim of the event should be straightforward: we listen to the album together and perhaps even chat about it after!
Even better, some special guests have agreed to come thru: we’ll be opening the space with a tea circle with @akiltheherbalist @count_kuumba as well as sweet treats by @cakencup0 . I’ll also have little notebooks for attendees both as a little gift for coming as well as for writing/doodling/what-have-you.
The project will be free to stream exclusively on Bandcamp and also on sliding scale/free to download (remember downloading music?!).
There is also a zine/lyric booklet available to purchase (pre-orders in goog form here).
The music/beats are self produced (shoutout to garageband!), and while I have a hard time describing genre, I might say some kind of fusion of dance/electronic/darkwave and hiphop (?). Ultimately, it was very important to me to create a poetry album that sounded contemporary, that wasn’t just an acoustic guitar or jazz or lo-fi, that it wasn’t an album that sounds like it could have come out in the hay-day of poetry albums in the 70s and 80s. I love that people do their thing and I’m not trying to shade anyone, but for me, I needed the sound to push expectations and to be in conversation with the music I regularly listen to.
This project has been many years in the making. The earliest poems were written 2018/2019 and the earliest beats 2022/2023. There is so much I could say about any individual poem or beat, but mostly I’m thrilled to finally be sharing everything with you all.
Saturday May 17, 2025 at Counterpath in Denver, CO at 6:30pm is the musical rendition of MISEDUCATION featuring the musical stylings of Angie Ráfaga @larafagadr
I’ve been dreaming of having music for Miseducation, and I knew it would be a project that I would need to collaborate with a musician on. So when I saw Angie perform at her birthday party/EP release show last year, I was like omg this could be it. And it has been an amazing experience! Angie and I have been friends since high school and working together has been a wonderful opportunity to strengthen our friendship as well as our crafts. I’m so amazed at not just Angie’s talent and not just her generosity throughout this process, but her curiosity. Our first meeting for this project was just us talking about the book. I watched her annotate her copy– truly one of the best things to witness as an author. We’ve both been really open to each other’s ideas and what we each have to bring to the table. And so for most of 2025 we’ve been meeting weekly and rehearsing. The show on May 17 is a culmination of the work, yes, but really just the beginning, just the first show. We’re hoping to have more shows (including a virtual option) as well as recordings in the future.
& before I move on from Miseducation, I will be reading from the chapbook to celebrate the newest winner of the NDR chapbook contest, Ajanaé Dawkins and her chapbook Blood-Flex. Not only am I a fan of VS Podcast (although, admittedly, I stopped listening after the Poetry Foundation fuckery [ugh don’t even get me started! They self-decided that the boycott against them was done and everyone was like just oh okay! *eye roll* That said, while I personally won’t be supporting PoFo, in these times we are living in, get your poetry money. As the great poet Missy Elliot has said, “Aint no shame baby do your thang, just make sure you ahead of the game.”) but also we took a virtual poetry workshop together (maybe 2020? 2021?) and got to meet briefly in Seattle at AWP. Also reading are Meg Kim (who I got to read with and celebrate with last year!) and Ayokunle Falomo (who I’ve always admired! I’ve even written a poem inspired by his work– my poem Gigan for Opening the Urn, published in Indiana Review, was very much inspired by a poem of his). All of this is to say I’m very much looking forward to reading with all these talented brilliant poets!
The virtual reading is MONDAY May 12, 2025 at 7:30pm CST (6:30pm MST, shout out to the ~7% of us USAmericans living in MST [does this include Arizona? Because they are a lie! They don’t follow daylight savings. They say MST, but really, they are on PST right now until Fall Back!]). If you want a zoom link, message me and I’ll get it to you (as you may or may not know, I’ve been zoom-bombed at least 3 times and would like it to not happen again, so I’m not in the business of sharing naked zoom links on the internet. PLEASE ORGANIZERS OF VIRTUAL EVENTS, DO NOT SHARE ZOOM LINKS ONLINE, PLEASE USE A GOOGLE FORM OR SOMETHING. PLEASE CONSIDER THE PROTECTION OF FOLKS IN VIRTUAL SPACES!)
ON PRXPAGANDA
PRXPAGANDA is a 15 song/15 poem project of ~political~ poems that pull the threads of state language and policy to their logical conclusions. In many ways, it’s a reflection of the extent to which I myself have been brainwashed as well as participate, unfortunately, in brainwashing.
While there are many reasons for the title, I think the most salient influence comes from W.E.B DuBois. Anyone who knew me in college would know that DuBois was (and still may be) one of my favorite thinkers. In reading many of his works, the thing that most attracts me to DuBois is his growth, his willingness to amend and change ideas (a primary example would be his change of tune of the notion of the Talented Tenth; another example would be his early dismissal of the contributions of Africans/the African continent changing into more Pan-African politics and eventually moving to Ghana).
DuBois wrote in “Criteria of Negro Art,” from The Crisis (where he served as editor) (1926): “All art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.”
Thus, PRXPAGANDA.
I started making beats for my poetry after my dad passed away. I was writing what I called “divination poems” or poems written from language provided by oracle card interpretations. I’d do a 4 card pull and write a poem with the language that came to me. After my dad passed, I stopped writing them, stopped feeling the same pull or urge to do so. However, I noticed that those poems kept calling out to me. I had always wanted to make music but had limited knowledge/training. And making a beat for a poem you love feels like high stakes. But these poems, poems often of language that felt more channeled than my own, they felt really stretchy, really malleable to music. It didn’t feel risky, it felt fun to experiment. So I did and the SYZYGY EP happened. I love it as a project and I love the middle songs and the others song are alright. But most importantly, it showed me what it would take to make my poems into songs.
I say this to say that PROPAGANDA is particularly exciting because these are a lot of my favorite beats I’ve made since 2022. And it’s also cool because these songs have gone thru various drafts/iterations/sounds/beats far more than I expected (and idk why because it’s like poems– one day you decide to just change the form randomly and just go with it).
Beyond simply the poems, I am concerned about the sound, the audio, the music of it all. My hope is for the sound experience to be unique, something only phaentompoet could do. It may have strange or curious sounds (I’m very inspired by producers like Björk and FKA twigs and SOPHIE) but also will hopefully be something a body can move to in some way, can really feel on a level beyond/outside of language. I try to design my poetry this way already, in fact many people use the word “musical” to describe my poetry. As much as the words matter to me, I can’t expect them to matter to anyone else. But if I can provide an experience that doesn’t actually require understanding, that can be a portal to somewhere or something outside of words, that’s super meaningful too.
The last thing I want to say on the project is the mixing and mastering. Because it is me, I always feel strange about the word master. Maybe to the point where I shirk getting a masters degree. Maybe to the point where I demonstrate extreme skepticism about the concept of “mastery” of anything. Maybe to the point where I do not master my music. It’s a good and bad thing. Mastering is, arguably, a very necessary part of contemporary music because of how technology has advanced in music and streaming. We listen to all this information and soundwaves travel in various forms– listening to music in earbuds or headphones, listening to a streamed playlist or a radio mix, speakers in a car or a portable bluetooth speaker. Someone who is an expert at mastering will adjust the “master track” (basically the final track after all the mixing of individual tracks/instruments is done) will make it so that the track sounds consistent, smooth, and good on various kinds of devices.
When people talk about “mixing” it is how each track, how each sound mixes together. You wanna hear the instruments, the percussion, and the vocals in a way where the mix is balanced. This is a subjective decision, of course– like if you want vocals more pulled back and more flowing with instruments or more pronounced and up front in the mix, or if you want percussion to sound more loud or more quiet. For me, mixing is just a part of the music making process. Mastering, however, is more about the listener experience than it is about the precise music making (in my opinion! This is certainly arguable).
Mastering is also a method in which the music industry enslaves artists because often mastering has to be done by an audio engineer with technical expertise (you can already hear the $$$$ in this). Because this is the master track that they create, they can then take ownership of those master tracks and manipulate artists with them. You often hear about artists having masters, not having masters, or wanting to purchase them. And you can always tell when songs are or are not mastered in our current sound/music sphere– maybe your device and your speaker are at full volume but you can still hardly hear the track. Things like that. Since we have grown to have a particular sensitivity to sound, we can often glean details– when the noise filter does or doesn’t filter, background pops, breaths, etc. In fact, we as humans seem to have a greater sensitivity to sound than sight– We’d prefer bad visuals and good audio to bad audio and good visuals. I consider a poetry podcast that I adore in terms of content, but their audio is awful and it makes it so hard to listen to it.
So basically I understand that the decision to not master the project will make the experience more limited. You are almost locked into listening with earbuds or headphones for the best experience. But from a financial position, what benefit does it serve? For the SYZYGY EP, I know for sure that FOUR people have bought and listened to the project. I know all of them by name actually. Outside of those 4, I do not have any confidence that anyone else has or will listen– no matter how much marketing I do. This is the reality of the music industry: we are so saturated with music and sound that we are hardly moving outside of our comfort zones, often even for our favorite artists. Most people do not listen to new music, and when they do, it is because it is popularized and spoonfed to us. This is to say, if Beyoncé is having to work hard to get people to listen to her new music, imagine an up and coming artist. This is part of the reason why tik tok is a major way for new artists to break thru– the tik tok algorithm reaches outside of your following but inside of your interests, and it loops the audio to make things more sticky. And if random people are listening, they will be all the more harsh on the quality because there is no reason or need to be gentle.
It all becomes another reason why performing is so important (for me)– how else will you hear my music unless I physically come and bring it to you. This has been my philosophy with poetry, which is why I believe maintaining a regular performance practice and frequenting open mics is crucial. So at the end of the day, it’s what I am accepting for this project: you likely aren’t going to be listening unless I am performing (hence the listening party, but let’s be so honest, I’m not really expecting a large turnout. I’d be pleasantly surprised if there were more than 5 people…)
Ultimately I’ve reached a similar attitude with my poetry as my music: I’m totally uninterested in playing politics-as-usual with the industry. I’m totally uninterested in fame. I’m totally uninterested in collecting “fans” like “numbers”. I don’t care about mass-distribution of my work. I don’t care about follower numbers. It’s forced me to contend with industry norms and make decisions: I do not want to go back to school to study my art. I don’t want a degree. I don’t care about awards. I don’t care about publication outside of myself. I don’t care about record labels. I just care about getting my work out in a way that feels good to me. So that’s what’s happening!
So while this particular project is some kind of example of hyper-indepence, it is more out of necessity and less by choice. I think that is also a reason why the MISEDUCATION project is giving me so much life: it was an opening for a successful collaboration, which are truly so rare. But even in independence, I hope it can provide permission for others to follow your vision, no matter if you have so much support or if it is just you. Just you, making beats, writing poems, composing songs, filming visuals, listening and editing repeatedly, making flyers, sending emails, crafting marketing campaigns (or in my case, just me and my sister Alisha). (and while this is technically true, I still give my community a lot of credit for supporting me. Whether writing groups or fellowships or local gatherings– all those spaces and the people in them have contributed. I’m very grateful for y’all. While things may happen alone or in solitude, nothing happens in isolation, nothing happens without community.)
SINGLES
I really understand why musicians have to be really choosy with singles. And honestly I was not, it was a matter of what made sense. So the two singles from PRXPAGANDA have been Mutual Constitution and Count the Cameras because those two were the visuals that were easiest to execute. Because MC is about the Bill of Rights and because I have been performing it for 5 years, I had hand choreography all ready to go and it was just a matter of recording it (and shoutout to my sister for helping, you can see her hands in the video as well as mine). As for CtC, I had been collecting footage for over a year, so it also just made sense to finally put it all together. I had more ambitious ideas and spots to film… but it was mostly just me shooting on my phone with a limited budget, so I couldn’t do everything I wanted.
I have a whole notebook for my visual ideas (fun fact, I used to make [bad] short films in high school and college. I even took a film class for one of my art electives. [You’d think that would help more with my film editing skills but alas lmao] Arguably, I thought I’d be a film maker long before I thought I’d be a poet or a musician. I suppose I’m all of them now…). In that book, I still have pending visual concepts for 8 more poemsongs…and maybe I’ll attempt them after the album is out. I also have a few friends who have been going to school for directing and film. I’ve pitched them poetry visual ideas, made documents with visual references, but as is the case with most of my collaboration attempts, nothing followed through. This is a constant theme in my artistic practice, driven toward hyper-independence after so many collaboration attempts fail.
Anywhooooo if you haven’t seen the visuals, I’d love if you checked them out. Much like the songs, they are indeed imperfect, but conceptually? *chef kiss*
Mutual Constitution:
Count the Cameras:
Unlike most music projects, many of the poemsongs have had their lyrics/written versions published. I’ll share the links to those poems, which are also kind of singles in a way.
“Citizen" (again haha)
https://therumpus.net/2023/04/25/national-poetry-month-day-25-aerik-francis/
"Executive Discretion" and "Thingification"
https://www.acentosreview.com/September2021/aerik-francis.html
"Casually Cruel" [also in MISEDUCATION] http://ndrmagarchive.org/poetry/2022/05/4-poems-from-miseducation/
"Apocalypse Party" (in print in Bat City Review– not available online, but you can find screencaps on my IG)
END
OKAY THAT’S IT. THANKS FOR READING, EVEN WITH ALL MY LITTLE PARENTHETICAL NOTES AND RANTS.
PLZ LISTEN TO THE ALBUM, OUT FRIDAY ON BANDCAMP! PLZ CONSIDER PURCHASING A ZINE! PLZ COME THRU TO ONE OR BOTH THE EVENTS IF YOU’RE LOCAL. PLZ KEEP IN TOUCH AND FOLLOWING FOR UPDATES FOR FUTURE SHOWS AND PROJECTS. PLZ REACH OUT IF YOU WANT TO COLLABORATE.
I’M GONNA BE SO HONEST, I’M NOT EXPECTING ANYONE TO COME TO THE LISTENING PARTY OR THE MISEDUCATION PERFORMANCE– PERHAPS IT’S ALL THE PAST REJECTION AND THE HYPER-INDEPENDENCE (THERE’S THAT WORD AGAIN) BUT MOST POETRY GIGS I DO, DESPITE MARKETING, I [CORRECTLY] ASSUME NOBODY IS THERE FOR ME. SO I’M DOING THIS FOR ME WITHOUT THE EXPECTATION OF ANYONE ELSE. THAT BEING SAID, I’D STILL LOVE IF YOU COULD SURPRISE ME AND COME THRU, EVEN IF ONLY FOR A MOMENT. IT WOULD MEAN A LOT TO ME.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRESENCE AND SUPPORT– I CAN AND DO COMPLAIN A LOT BUT I ALWAYS MAINTAIN GRATITUDE.
MAY WE CONTINUE TO UNWASH OUR BRAINS