2007 - Vol. 4, Issue 6

"Contact Improvisation"

Drags her foot, languid, with a stutter,
ankle sweeps the ground, a little vibrato on the toe
and she dances, her fingers float up, her chin down.

If you catch her carefully on the marley,
handbreadth beneath her left subscapularis,
your weight hangs in the balance.

You move together: floor dancer, stepper,
the guy with the wheelchair lays a casual curve
crutch girl kicks up the cane in a grand round

blind bloke connects round metal and a clavicle's tip
sleight of hand, quick fingers float into song:
bodies stretch over and now

into contact.

Levitation: gaps disappear in the light

You can see inside.

"Disability Culture"

For Jim Ferris

Here live the Cyclopes — one–eyed giants,
the Hecatoncheires — those with a hundred hands —
the first disabled people, freaks of the Earth.
Oh, how the sight frightened the father,
who hid them deep,
stopped up in the mother's bowels.
They swelled up Gaia's womb,
hummed and danced in the caverns of Tartarus.
She screamed:
Aia! Aia!
It hurts! It hurts!
And plotted with Cronos to end the monstrous regime.
Honing words to a razor,
with a sickle of adamantine,
flash of crystal clock clarity,
time's poet son unhooked his father's jewels,
sacks of flesh now, wrinkled, aged,
and tossed them to the sea,
to bear one beauty on a wave,
to release sisters and brothers from the deep.

But tell me, crip poet,
What do we remember of those Tartarus dances,
When we sleep–rock, pill–suck, give the cool round metal to the hot street curb?
What was the counterpoint to Gaia's cries?
When flesh was still melded,
         thousand fingers to a body,
         one lid with silken lashes,
         spines uncoiling,
         brother and sister not names we knew,
What mutterings stirred?

"Infectious Rhythms"

Earth: a gypsum quarry, now a placid lake,
crystals too small for my calcite spine
clay hardened into geometric support
watered, a turtle turned on its back.

Gold: cold against half–healed wounds,
pure chastity, a nostrum plate,
keeps itself aloof and shiny
such bracing isolation.

Now, when I pass a magnet,
say in an industrial museum, or one
dedicated to the navigation of ships,
I feel the iron, my blood fired

aligned, arranged, a field of compass points
on waves of needling influences
elemental dance deep in my history
alchemical weddings beyond my pleasure

plaster brace, gold, steel and copper bands
oh, touch me now, remember,
open up, noble ones, infiltrate,
pain cut to me like mercurial clothes.

"Joint"

Open the joint, walk along the dark path
Feel the hinge that pivots the body
Through darker space
Forecast, plastered in place
and stuck, with the crystal sound of spheres
Orbit the gnawed heads
Walk the moon surface
Stand on foreign ground:
On the grind of eons, it gnarls, assaults
its explorers, its wayfarers, its tourists:
those who travel, innocent
of their weighty matters, gravity
and its bloody coin, the silver dollars
To put on the dead
To pay the ferryman
To get out of here,
Out, out, into aluminum hell
Into the white light of fire
Into the green tiles of green space people
Into the eyes of one who says:
Count down, now
Count down, now
All will be alright
All will be alright

And the light blinks
The light blinks
And the light blinks
The joint
The joint: between the now and the then
I sit up
Between the sharp edge of yesterday and the coming of this,
I stand
And rehearse the steps towards launch
And find my path in the night, the bright night

"Crip Music"

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