Franny Choi

A Brief History of Cyborgs


Once, an animal with hands like mine learned to break a seed with two stones – one hard and one soft.

Once, a scientist in Britain asked: Can machines think? He built a machine, taught it to read ghosts, and a new kind of ghost was born.

At Disneyland, I watched a robot dance the macarena. Everyone clapped, and the clapping, too, was a technology.

I once made my mouth a technology of softness. I listened carefully as I drank. I made the tools fuck in my mouth – okay, we can say pickle if it’s easier to hear – until they birthed new ones. What I mean is, I learned.

There was an animal who learned to break things, and he grew and ate and grew and ate and

A scientist made a machine girl and wedded her to the internet. He walked her down the aisle and said, Teach her well. The trolls rubbed their soft hands on their soft thighs.

The British scientist was discovered to be a soft man. He made a machine that could break any code, as a means of hardening a little.

At Disneyland, I watched lights move across a screen and, for a moment, forgot the names of my rotting parts. In this way I became somewhat more like a light, or a screen for lights.

The scientist’s daughter married the internet, and the internet filled her until she spoke swastika and garbage, and the scientist grew afraid and grew and

The animal rose and gave itself a new name. It pointed to its spine, its skilled hands. It pointed to another animal and said animal / alien / bitch / stone

The scientist called me hard, and I softened my smile. The scientist called me soft, and I broke sentences to prove him wrong and what and what did I prove then did I

Even blood, when it comes down to it, is only a series of rules.

I made my mouth a jar until technology squirmed and bubbled. I scooped up the foam and called it language. The audience applauded. To prove them wrong, I became a screen of lights. I had no thighs at all.

The scientist grew afraid and took his daughter back. He broke her open like a seed, but the seed was already dry.

The internet pointed to my mouth and said blood / blood in the stool. I said, Come in. Make yourselves at home. I opened my glittering jaw. My hunger, too, has both hard and soft parts.

Here, in a seed, is a cyborg: A bleeding girl, dragging a knife through the sand. An imaginary girl who dreams of becoming trash.

Can machines think / come here let me show you / ask me again

 

Franny Choi

Franny Choi is the author of the collection Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014) and the chapbook Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She has received awards from the Poetry Foundation and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan, a Project VOICE teaching artist, a Kundiman Fellow, and a member of the Dark Noise Collective.

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