This poem is published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.
Neuropathy as a Treasure Map
Freshborn scalpel slicing through skullcap,
the metallic taste of limes fizzing. When
you repot a plant you untangle, shake out
the soil, sometimes more capable hands
Separate root and reminders into two
plants. Bone clicks apart, tectonic plates
shuffling, tap dancing on the instability.
Doctors hands slip into wet silk,
meninges as latex gloves, wiggling.
Sometimes they shake you so hard
a piece of you breaks off and gets stuck
somewhere incorrect in the system.
If you inject alcohol into the prefrontal
cortex in just the right place – they
want you to call it psychosurgery now.
Can you remember that? Your tattoos
are probably not moving. Close your
head. Apply magnetics. Shake vigorously.
A liquid IV of horse wobblifier, to give
you strength and vitality. Bite down
hard so they know when to stop. Your
entire eye socket has gone blue, what
have you been dreaming about now?
Someone is grabbing a tree sprouting
from my amygdala and putting pressure
against my brain stem, they tug –
they tug, they tug, my sister falls out,
she is still dead, tug, drink, drink, drink,
vodka mixed with French wine, you are
still dead. They’ve wrenched out too much
meat and none of it matter, or all of it,
or my ex lover and his heroin, winking,
and I wink back and my eye never opens
again. And I count from one to fifteen
like a twenty seven year old never could.
And they shake. Bone fragments and
swellings that hush like the sea when
shaken rain onto the operating chair. I
forgot what they were looking to remove,
I hope they got it. I remember to hope,
they got it. I remember, I. She used to be
such a nice girl. Now she is freshly dug
soil in neatly tilled lines beneath yew trees
that hold her hands underground
and they tug. And someone says I feel
much better now. Is it over yet? Is it over?
A Simple Diagnosis
Hot night, mid-July / I would kill for a hairband right now / I like roses better when they wither / all my favourite things are dead, or dying, or disabled / which in my country sometimes feels synonymous / and I can’t sleep / and the sky doesn’t even have the decency to put on a light show for me / I watched the sky split like a bursting lip from this window / the night Boris Johnson was elected / and now we have the right kind of government / and no one goes to prison for protesting oil / and no one sells bombs / and no one lies awake at night wishing they weren’t denied support for their health conditions / just because the system failed to notice them before you turned eighteen / and no one is hungry / and no one is dead / and we are no one / but tonight’s not about that / the temperature is a sulk / and I am losing my temper with my body / overstimulated by the seasons / protesting things I cannot change / hitting my nose against a brick wall / to spite my deeply political face / I will smile at the news reporters / all nosebleeds and lips bruised the colour of this night / I will give them three hundred thousand reasons why fourteen years of my life drove me to this / and they’ll say, autism.
After Van Gogh’s Blue Room
The floorboards look like they’ve been scratched. Like walls scratched with breaking fingernails hung from a noose. Like tallies of time. Like a prison. Like a prisoner trying to survive. Like lying on the floor, cheek to cold wood. Like insects are welcome to break up the monotony. Like splinters are welcome too close to the eyeball, to insert jeopardy. There’s two tones of wood. Perhaps some is more worn than others. Perhaps he paces near the camera. Perhaps this is the signs of anxiety. Of pain. Perhaps the room is made of the shadows under the bed (the same tone as everywhere else). Perhaps the monsters are spreading. Perhaps the unhappiness is spreading. Perhaps pain is awake.
Kathryn O’Driscoll is a queer, disabled poet, mentor, editor and spoken word event organiser from Bath, England. She was the 2021 U.K. Poetry Slam Champion and a World Slam Finalist. She was longlisted for the Disabled Poets Prize and the Outspoken Prize for Performance Poetry in 2023, and the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Artist in 2022. In 2021 she was one of the featured poets on the (BAFTA winning) Sky Arts spoken word TV show Life and Rhymes. Her debut collection ‘Cliff Notes’ is available from Verve Poetry Press.
Featured image in this post is, “La Chambre à Arles, by Vincent van Gogh, from C2RMF” By Vincent van Gogh, licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.
