Everything healed up
but in a very strange way
Years later
when it was very obvious
that something was very wrong with my face
everyone
said one or more of the following:It’s the Lord’s will.
Just learn to live with it.
It’s all in your imagination.
Don’t be so self-centered.
Shut up and do your homework.
Other people are worse off than you.
[Full text available in the 2004 anthology Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories, edited by Bob Guter and John R. Kilacky.]
I’ve been thinking a lot about disability and creativity. Harnessing our energies and letting them into the universe, finding ways to express our experiences. I wanted to share a few poems I’ve found by disabled women.
“Naked, at 45” by Tracy Koretsky
Like pampas grass, whose blush fades, whose reeds
desiccate and snap, or like the house left to weather,
sinking, soft edges fraying…there is no fresh metaphor
for my body, aging. An ordinary body.
(Read the rest of “Naked, at 45”)
“You Get Proud By Practicing” by Laura Hershey
If you are not proud
for who you are, for what you say, for how you look;
if every time you stop
to think of yourself, you do not see yourself glowing
with golden light; do not, therefore, give up on yourself.
You can
get proud.
(Read the rest of “You Get Proud By Practicing”)
“every morning at 9 am,” by cripchick
i wrap my hand around her
skinny denim thigh
preparing myself for what will
come next
(Read the rest of “every morning at 9 am,”)
Do you have a favourite disabled poet or poem about disability?