Breath & Shadow
2006 - Vol. 3, Issue 6
"Plot Marks"
written by
Jeanette Beal
I am a number or
I am a face
sunglasses covering eyes
tired and swollen shut
today my inner anger
wants to have her say
as you pass by in dozens
two by two
watching and waiting for me
to fall or crack up
into the sidewalk bent and curving
through grass and mud
or snow
I tip tap down the sidewalk
and stumble past cobble stone
brick side streets
so cute to your nimble, sighted feet.
You whisper.
You stare.
Ask me
what I want
and how I want it
instead of sticking in,
sticking through
parts of my body now
foreign and skewed.
I am lost in a building
one, two, or three feet
away from where I need to be
laughing at myself — the blind girl
who too, once ran away
from the woman with the cane.
My eyes are in traction
from too many years
of maniacal rehabilitation
and familial searches for
magic potions —
my life has become
a memoir of deviation
refracting boundaries built on
childish devotion to the notion
that blindness hasn't happened.
Who cares what all those doctors
would tisk and say
behind blue lights
white lights
blinking lights
yellow drops
gray splots
plot marks
on my brain?
Jeanette K. Beal is a queerly blind feminist poet and writer who can usually be found fighting cobblestones with her trusty cane, Fred. She publishes a zine for the queerly disabled entitled Restricted and likes to start protests.