they call the phenomenon “the brain zaps.”
…………I call it the air before a thunderstorm.
……………………metal on your tongue. scent more
………………………………ozone than petrichor. harsher.
…………………………………………you’re all sweat and dizzy
………………………………from the buzz, the crackle of it
……………………reverberating in your head:
…………withdrawal a livewire flicking
across the road like a cat’s tail.
if my crâne is to be made plasma globe
…………then why aren’t your fingers glowing
……………………at my temples: neon violet and red
………………………………and electric blue. picture my skull
…………………………………………as lava lamp, globs of gelatinous lobe
………………………………rising and falling in cerebrospinal fluid.
……………………everything feels mushy, feels delicate
…………as I imagine any brain would feel after
shock—synapses misfiring for lack of.
Jenna Lyn Albert is a genderqueer poet living on the traditional unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Wolastoqiyik people. Their debut collection of poetry Bec & Call (Nightwood Editions, 2018) won the New Brunswick Book Awards’ Fiddlehead Poetry Prize, and they served a two-year term as the City of Fredericton’s Poet Laureate from 2019-2021. Jenna recently published a chapbook mal à l’aise with Anstruther Press.
