bioinnstacks

[bioinnstacks]

bone-locks/joints burst

  Today I am the vibration fingers make

when they meet a face

the sound of someone forgetting to breathe

the first flush of blood swelling from a wound

the sting of hot water on a welt

the ache of teeth

the taste of salt in my throat

Today I am a hollow lung

a wish bone waiting for the break

Tomorrow I will be

a skeleton key.

 - From Skeletal Mosaic, Sarah Wilson

“burston banlocan” in Beowulf translates as ‘bone-locks/joints burst.’ ‘Bonelock’ was the Old English word for joints.

[bioinnstacks]

When I hear you say that we have no language, it’s as strange and sad to me as if you had said There are no stars, because you’ve never been out in the country at night. Never lain out in predawn dark in a frozen roadside field to see the Leonid showers. - That the pulsing lights of fireflies are meaningless chemical blips, not love songs in Morse code. - It makes me think you’ve never known the easy comfort of reading together, sharing a porch filled with morning sunlight. - Not known the thrill of the first time you realize you’re sharing a thought without even a glance. - Never spent a Friday night looking up radio interviews for the pleasure of hearing your own accent, your own native dialect of metaphor, spoken for just a few minutes. - It’s like hearing you insist that the feeling of walking barefoot through soft grass can’t exist because you’ve never done it. - That you’ve never gotten a letter in the mail, only catalogues and bills. - You’ve never read poetry; your school library had only textbooks. There are no fairy tales in Icelandic, because you don’t speak it. - Never heard the soft fractal murmur of breeze in oak and elm and walnut boughs in August, the heartbeat drone of cicadas. - It’s always been winter.

Chavisory, “When I hear you say,” at Chavisory’s Notebook (for Autistics Speaking Day 2014, quoted in entirety with permission)

[bioinnstacks]

Signed poetry. Let’s do it!

On February 19,2016 I had the honour to compete with these lovely ladies in a Deaf Slam Poetry competition. The poem we selected is “Somewhere in America ” written by Rhiannon McGavin, Belissa Escoloedo, and Zariya Allen.

Brave New Voices video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OadZpUJv8Eg

[bioinnstacks]

A wonderful essay on crip poetics.

[bioinnstacks]

1

I drift in and out of space. I am the broken wing The feather on dead thermals.

Only a kiss, above the brow

Slumbering, wake me gentle, Wake me silent as doe steps

[bioinnstacks]

By Sarah Katz

They Fall Apart

You piece the shapes of my mouth together tracing messages, my constellations bounding deer. You don’t hear me yell until I hold your small palm to my throat. Sound is funny. We laugh at the words. They get in the way, odd winged things.

Words dart around us for nothing. We snicker at those lassoing them together because all for what? Tangled words march away into air, constellations wilder than lightning. We watch others yell, incensed, thrusting thunder from their throats

and laugh, leaping into the hill’s throat behind the school, gathering lilacs, pretty things we want to remember. School bells yell to return. Children gather together like wolves. In dirt, we sketch constellations. Their mouths must hurt from so many words.

You think maybe they don’t. Give me their words! your mouth says. A cracking in my throat. I don’t want to fight with constellations too hard to see. There are greater things I say, things that fit well together, that don’t fall apart. But still you yell,

Give me the words! I’m tired of your yell. I point to their lips. You read the words. You look with your O mouth, your O throat, squinting and the sounds fly away together, blurring by, dying constellations we cannot see. They look like nothings.

Our eyes hurt at the sight of nothings their mouths shape. We map lips and yells flashing by, ineffable constellations, stitching together their half-words, craters in the dark. We feel together for thunder, sewing symbols to their throats

for nothing. They get in the way, their throats tangling the air with wayward words, the signs never right, never falling together.

[bioinnstacks]

I am not one of the physically challenged - I’m a sock in the eye with gnarled fist I’m a French kiss with cleft tongue I’m orthopedic shoes sewn on a last of your fears I am not one of the differently abled - I’m an epitaph for a million imperfect babies left untreated I’m an ikon carved from bones in a mass grave at Tiergarten, Germany I’m withered legs hidden with a blanket I am not one of the able disabled - I’m a black panther with green eyes and scars like a picket fence I’m pink lace panties teasing a stub of milk white thigh I’m the Evil Eye I’m the first cell divided I’m mud that talks I’m Eve I’m Kali I’m The Mountain That Never Moves I’ve been forever I’ll be here forever I’m the Gimp I’m the Cripple I’m the Crazy Lady I’m The Woman With Juice

I Am Not One Of The, Cheryl Marie Wade (via 1992novamber)

[bioinnstacks]

Before by Josephine Miles

Earlier, what I remember: a small Flame of arthritis in the midst of fields In the Euclidian Sunday mustard fields And the mud fields of the potted palm, In Jackie’s airy room, And at the fire station All the brass And all of us Feeding the gulls. A fresh salt breeze and foam Around a plaster leg. Away from the chloroform intern, joy Of the long journey when I ran Free of the plaster, and got back Down those long hills, spent out. Where had I been, oh tell me. And where Under those vast sunny Apricot trees in the front yard? Go tell Aunt Rhodie the old gray goose is dead.

[bioinnstacks]

Crip Music by Petra Kuppers

A beat behind, sycophant, you Sisyphus, roll and run again and again Sybil whistle tune, mournfully whistle in the dark the shoe steps the rhythm behind, behind, behind you with the crutch cane stick beat the cripple who ripples across the street with the wheel on the rack rackle and giggle the cripple till the music stops we step out and then, and then, it builds the sound, and the beat and the melody of the cane and the melody of the crutch and the melody of the wheel and the tap of the stick and the tick of ventilators dilate, pulse push breath through the street roll forward and on the beat in a circle we move, we move the line held firm the song lifting

[bioinnstacks]

I Want You to Know This - Jillian Weise

I am fifteen years old and I have to decide when to let Daniel Hazard kiss me.

He repairs old Fords. We drive past sand dunes, until something rattles in his trunk

and he pulls over to investigate but instead crawls on top of me in the front seat.

I have an artificial leg. He doesn’t know that and when his hand rubs against me

and I’m not real, he stops and says, "What the hell?" like I’ve offended him.

Everything is different now. Daniel Hazard calls every day except Sundays

which he spends with his family and I guess that means he’s a good guy

and has the values my mother talks about. He’s afraid to hold my hand because he thinks

it might throw me off balance. Hand-holding doesn’t throw me off balance.

I want you to know this, because maybe you wondered about people with fake legs; maybe

you wanted to hold their hand but you didn’t because you thought you might trip.

[bioinnstacks]

ARE YOU A DISABLED WRITER?

We want your work. More than that, we need your work.

We cannot accurately represent the writing of 20-somethings without your input.

How do we define disability? However you do.

Interested? Submit your poetry, prose, and/or art.

[bioinnstacks]

Have you checked out Beauty is a Verb : The New Poetry of Disability?

Desperate search for poetry and especially criticism, especially related to marginalised groups

I’ve really misunderstood how to write my essay and I’m going to have to restart it. I’ve spent 3.5 weeks so far of 5 on this essay and done two attempts and now I’m back to scratch. I’ve got two essays to do after this. Does anyone know any ideas or links for the poetry of disability, poetry from liberation perspectives, and criticism thereof?

[bioinnstacks]

Barking Sycamores accepts submissions and publishes poems on a continual basis.  We also welcome and publish essays about autism and poetics.

While anyone may submit to Barking Sycamores, preference is given to submissions from writers on the autism spectrum or from writers with related (and often concurrent) conditions, such as Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder (AD(H)D), Nonverbal Learning Disability (NVLD), Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), Tourette’s Syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Expressive Language Disorder, and so forth. We are not only referring to those with official diagnoses but to anyone who recognizes themselves as neurodivergent.

[bioinnstacks]

Rough draft

Letters from Frida Kahlo

1.

Dear disabled artist, do not busy yourself with apologies there are no pigments that hold sorry as well as they carry your anguish..

Do not be sorry for your pain, the rancid flesh of your heart.

They will war over your body, Death, a spectacle of flowered braids. They will dream away the crippled Commie, the lame baroness of Marx manifesto and they will keep the brow

like a lifeline, the valley in the pulse. Vitals, the hair on my face was no accident.

2.

I was never an artist first, the hurt came, a puberty of shattered hip and pelvis, the sheared womb, the surgeries a monthly menstruation

to put me back. As if the able body was my default as if the gimped child in me died that day they wanted to resurrect a normal woman, pieced together from a doctored ideal. The accident was a puberty, a marriage, a eulogy the phoenix birth of artist, still it burned.

3.

Promise to Create, damn it. Dear crippled child.

Give your ailment a name, coerce the devil until you find yourself a twin. Embrace the misery as bitter tequila, burn your ears, adorn your head and take them prisoner.

Hold your captives Cactus needle close as lovers and remember your power.

4.

Always paint in bed, your pajama spine like chipped china. The hue comes monsoon season; leave the damage splattered sheets remember to make love in puddles.

Your prosthetic is lingerie, withered muscle an aphrodisiac your facial hair a weapon.

Dress Tehuana to hide the backbrace, keep the cane close by, the derby handle a small consolation of a lover’s hand.

Paint your portrait 50 times, write the same poem over and over until the page is dark and ineligible with ink, take your photo, smiling full tooth and lipstick glow; Create the masterpiece you’ve always needed, but never apologize for your pain.

[bioinnstacks]

Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability

If you are at all interested in poetry, I urge you to check out this amazing anthology that was just published, Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability

edited by Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, and Michael Northen. It is so wonderful, and includes some very insightful essays, as well as wonderful poems about what it’s like to be disabled/chronically ill, without the supercrip and sentimental themes.

I’m just getting started with it, but disability poetics is my main field of study in my PhD program.

[bioinnstacks]

My body, weary traveler, in an oasis drinks from pools of sleep.

Vassar Miller, “Cycle,” if I could sleep deeply enough (via wbrogers)

[bioinnstacks]

                        twig stick A line of trees hard   branches above the roofs                         the sea fog     press backward, down to water                                        every way slightly rocked           paths     infinite     3 dimensions                                        direction of the sun                                               past the sight                        emanate                in time dense,   travel                   around       the sap                                                  risen                                            the wind blows —Larry Eigner, “Apr. 7 ’64” Art Credit Popel Coumou via Booooooom