Anthrometeorology

Humans have a thermosphere in aura around our bodies
pushing a little like the heliosphere
even electromagnetism when we do laundry
static electricity raising our hairs up so we can feel
particles that drift in the static radius of our forcefields
with the evolutionary bits of anemones and silk webs
we call arm hair haptic tactility that reaches to the limit
of our effective thermo-magneto-strato-sphere

Although sometimes our fields fail us
like a strong wind or sitting on cold bus stop benches
we need to cuddle with a medium sized dog
or go home alone and wrap up in blankets and binge-watch
do some antisocial solitudes when we don’t have a dog

Our forces also fail us when we are given misleading and false equivalences
like when a late-night infomercial sells us a magnetic bracelet to cure acne
or a medium sized dog touches our freshly laundered pants and zap us both.
The dog looks puzzled and asks us why we did that to them
what are we supposed to say the dog has so much more sensitivity in that fur
and their ability to smell the particles their static fields entrap in orbit.
Our forces also betray us when airports use thermo-imaging
when our weak forces lack an ozone layer and UV light does damage

Our thermosphere also has ejection events
like our feverish infections that intensify our blushing sweating heats
and our various fluids that squirt snot stink their way out of us
always circulating within our bodies and then suddenly exiting
in ways that remind us of sunspots and we are made of exploded star minerals

All of that is to say maybe our circulatory systems
pushing a small piece of seawater around inside of us
creates a kind of weather; maybe the boundary between
our human biology and our bodily physics is anthrometeorology.

Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, The Dalhousie Review, untethered, Quail Bell, The Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, Literary Yard, Gray Sparrow, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, The Academy of Heart and Mind, Canadian Woman Studies, The MathematicalIntelligencer, The Canadian Journal of Family and Youth, The Journal of HumanisticMathematics, The Beatnik Cowboy, Borderless, Literary Veganism, and more. His lit-crit has appeared in Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, StudiesinSocialJustice, Rampike, and The/t3mz/Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant and its support of so many other writers during the polycrisis.