
Beatrice Iker
Poem #16: Phantom Genetics
Updated: May 6, 2022
My grandmother was light-skinned
she came from a pack of godly men and women in
Georgia, but she always held her spine like grandmothers in
Tennessee
My geneticist tells me I need a test
because not only am I dark-skinned
but I am not godly
I am fearsome
phantom
hellish, on good days
“Don’t worry about Georgia,” she says
“You are from
Tennessee.”
I lay back on the table
cold as indecision
and open my mouth
“Don’t worry about Georgia,”
she repeats
My gag reflex
hollers
when the nanobots are poured down my throat
“Your tears aren’t real,” I’m told, as fear spills from my eyes
I feel the bots in my chest: sifting, pinching, probing
they fill my lungs
they steal my breath, metal criminals
My tears are real, I think
My geneticist looks at her computer
the data from my lungs makes her frown
I consider murdering her
“You are from Tennessee,” she says, proudly, like I don’t know where I’m from
“But Georgia, and the east of Alabama, they’re holding your cells captive.”
“How do you hold captive that which you co-own?” I wonder, but my tongue has clocked out
it’s tired of the south, but is too southern to say so
“There’s red clay in your lungs; it’s weighing down your body.”
My mother is brown-skinned
neither lost nor found
where does her blood in me stop and Appalachia start
where does her hope in me stop and realism start
The bots climb back up my throat
my gag reflex
faints
I wish I could go along with it