These poems are published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.
Bag of Bones Stewing in Pearls of Wisdom
Hello my name is Bag of Bones
on a good day
or Wretched Sack of Bones
in brutal weather
We all have bad days.
Welcome to the woe is me space
a bleak land with no trees
where plague bulldozes bodies
and spews hell in its wake
Every cloud has a silver lining.
With the shrieeek of tinnitus on loop
cockier than life’s two firm truths
my crumbling spine would like a word
to name this hitbyMacktruck stew
Suffering builds character.
A mind disassembled
unmoored in its home
wandering the Bewilderness
in search of nouns and lost marbles
Not all who wander are lost.
Time is funny. Wibbly wobbly.
A crash course in aging
tumbling into eighty,
decades out of season
Age is just a number.
How far can I go in the woe
is me space? Blasting past sky
grasping for limits
clobbered and spent
all out of journey
requesting permission to land
It could be worse.
Tidings of Dementia
A monster in the shape of an envelope
arrived.
First, a polite greeting of Hello,
I come bearing news, please
won’t you take a peek inside?
Next, a steady tick tick ticking,
an unbending chant of here, I am
here, with hints of what’s to come.
Then, a murmur of Open. Open. Open.
Turned to a racket of thumping
and pounding, a full-throated
bark of here I am, hear me
howl.
Still drawn to the bliss of ignorance,
the space before knowing, suspended
before dawn, before hitting
the turn that knocks the course from north
to south, upright
to prone, calm
to storm.
What month is it? What year?
Who is the President?
Who was the President during the Civil War?
How are a hammer and a corkscrew similar?
They open, open, open, one
by blows of brute force, the other
with more grace and piercing pain.
To open or not to open?
That is the question.
Camille Buckner is a psychology professor by day who found her way back to poetry through a life-altering illness. A prolific, unpublished poet in her youth, she left poetry behind for an academic career in social psychology, specializing in gender, prejudice, and discrimination. After becoming seriously ill with Long Covid in March of 2020, Camille began using creative writing as a means of processing the trauma of complex chronic illness. Her first essay, entitled “One Year of COVID-19 Long-Hauling: A Beginning with a Middle and No End,” was published by CARRE4 in 2021. While writing a second essay, “Living with Long Covid in a ‘Post-Pandemic’ World,” Camille rediscovered poetry as a powerful means of documenting and releasing her trauma. In sharing her poetry, she hopes to raise awareness about the devastation of Long Covid, challenge the gaslighting that often accompanies complex chronic illness, and help people in this community feel less alone.
Featured image in this post is, “Assorted Ice bergs Thule Greenland” by Drew Avery, licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.
