This poem is published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.

Being Well Is Not

Binary
You consider this, munching on handfuls of nicotine gum.
What with cells and their porous membranes—
boundaries undefined.
“How are you feeling?” the doctor asks.
“I’m fine, thanks…” off your tongue—reflexive words leap,
like a fawn that won’t see the car
till it’s too late.

What he doesn’t know can’t hurt
him—only you and your disability forms:
you tick the box.
“Out of 10, how well are you?”
You’re back in math class again, wrestling with an unsolvable sum.
What’s the right answer? Observe:
Porous membranes grow thick—defined edges like boxes
we must tick—be quick—
the appointment is only 10 minutes.

Your migraine returns, the paperwork doubles,
seeing everything in two. Two of you:
is “well-you” and “unwell-you” the same?
The ‘varying’ box you’d tick—
if it existed—
but it doesn’t, not in public.

Bad days, zero-spoon days,
‘none-to-scrape-the-ground, to-dig-yourself-out’ days.
But if you do—discounted,
when someone sees you do one thing.

Panopticon. Surveillance—
more monitoring than your bloods get.
And you’re deficient in plenty—
neutrophils, for starters,
to protect—work so hard, they’re running out—
the poor things don’t know they can’t
protect you from the outside
when “outside” is a box to tick.

And if the tick-box is wrong,
there’s a bigger box they’ll sit you in.
 

Maria Lightwood is an autistic, ACE funded writer and disability advocate. Her novel-in-progress, Fractured Tadpoles Grow in the Dark, was shortlisted by Curtis Brown Creative. She has been awarded a place on ITV’s Mentoring Programme and the National Centre for Writing x TLC Free Reads programme. Her flash fiction Sleeping Dogs Lie in Fetal Position received an Honourable Mention in the CRAFT Flash Prose Prize, judged by Meg Pokrass. Maria’s work is shaped by lived experience of multiple disabilities, a refugee and poverty background, and estrangement following a violent upbringing. With no family safety net, she is building a life through writing— with the ambition to redefine disability representation in literature. Most recently, she became a Lead Author for an upcoming feature on Disabled Leaders, published by the Disability Action Research Kollective (DARK), a prominent disabled-led radical publication. She is also contributing to an ACE-funded Reflecting Realities project, and was selected for the CRIPtic x Spread the Word Salon with Cathy Reay.

Featured image in this post is, “Penetentiary Panopticon Plan” By Jeremy Bentham – licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.

These poems are published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.
 

Groundhog Day

There is nowhere more confining than a brain with PTSD.
I would strip off my neurons if I could, or flee
from the crackle of activated synapses
reanimating dead moments in relapses
and if I could remember who she was before
all the damage was done, I would close the door
on the in between then and now
but I don’t know how.
 

The Role of a Lifetime

Her field of vision narrows;
the periphery expands and looms
with a pressure that compresses.
Sound and light squeeze.

The children’s voices are microphones.
Her spouse’s questions are cymbals.
A band plays in her pounding chest,
stomping, valves flapping like flags.

Her daily performance is Oscar-worthy.
While the stage collapses beneath her,
she smiles and pretends,
until the curtain shuts abruptly.

The intermissions are sudden.
The act lasts until it doesn’t.
Everyone whispers: what’s wrong,
as she is carried off the stage.

Like they didn’t watch the backdrop shifting,
the weight of the walls crushing.
They believed she was stronger,
because she always holds them up.

Pamela Mathison-Levitt is a disabled writer living in the DMV. She has a master’s degree in psychology in education from the University of Pennsylvania and is passionate about homeschooling her children. Her poems and essays reflect her love of nature, her Unitarian Universalist faith, and her experiences with mental health and chronic illnesses, including: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, among other conditions. Mathison-Levitt’s work has appeared in Mid-Atlantic Review, Exposed Brick Literary Magazine, Pen in Hand, Emerald Coast Review, Literary Mama’s blog, Anthology of Appalachian Writers and other publications. You can find her work on Facebook at Lines and Branches or on Instagram @pmmlevitt.

Featured image in this post is, “Spotlight (14871682502)” By Rikard Edlund: Bass, licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.

These poems were published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.

Honest Erasure
     after Mary Karr
     The Burning Girl

went back and forth
     burning. The tonic took the ruby sun.

Lost

     we sprawled along.
           We breathed alongside

the thinnest
arms         all scarred

            with marks she’d made herself —

She sat in flames
              impolite. Later, we’d all think

Doused;
              unmoving. Devouring

light. She
didn’t. She
              touched no aspect of ourselves. I

              the awkward guest.
              An almost ghost. Her mother,

erasing
the edges of herself; smudging.

              Having seen that I testify:

it was ocean endless. She emptied herself
              into that blazing
Child
              with all her slender.

Dwindling.        Her father the devoted king burned
as we all watched. I was

the Friend                 insisting
                              for years.
Doctors, I forced her         sadness
                  close.

I said
that her arms were twigs        scissored
until                                      she slid.
                                            We watched

she was
          gone.                                   She was the tower

                                            We all burned.

Diagnostic Lunes, in 3 parts

Narcissism Lune

Your grief isn’t
yours. Mother says hers
needs more air.

Your body isn’t
yours. Mother says her
reflection means more.

Your life isn’t
yours. Mother says I made
you. A gift.

Migraine lune

My pain’s entrenched
inside my skull, like a
faulty genetic detonator.

Lune for my depression

List of pills
longer than my lifeline
pharmacy of hope.
 

We live here, too.
The beauty of capitalism is that we understand the glory of bootstraps, but
not boots on the ground, so much so, that the other shoe dropping is
actually a country, is actually an earthquake of ancestors and we, pulling up our straps,
pulling on our strings, do not have the capacity to truly understand
the trickle down of blood. That someone else’s wound
could bleed into ours, could stitch us together. Instead we call it infection,
instead one person hoards the gauze because his daddy built the company
from the ground up, but didn’t pick the cotton. And because some
bodies are not built for labor, they are rendered as worthless; disabled by a
system that would rather bury than mend them. We forget
that people are made from cells that are not at first malignant; they can be
healed.
 

On Tuesday nights
we recycle. A friend comes over to help sort glass from compost and carry.
You cannot lift heavy things. Tomorrow, mother is coming for tea. Wants
magic tricks for another Mother’s Day. When you are sober, you will learn
origami again. For now, you have placed a card someone else made of her
favorite flower on the kitchen island. A red string reminder that you must
fill it out before the water boils.

The friend is more efficient. He gathers and breaks down cardboard while
you watch reruns and pharmaceutical promises and give into insomnia’s
dreams. By morning, the daffodils have disappeared with the old residue
from bottles.
Mother is almost here.

She will accept nothing less than fanfare and cursive. You swallow your list
of excuses. You take a shot of whiskey. You pull out a blank card. You laugh
because it is circus-themed and faded; generations of tightrope walkers.
You know her walk in the hallway. The sound of her tongue click and sigh.
There’s a knock at the door only you can answer.

Natalie E. Illum (she/her) is a poet, disability activist, and singer living in Washington, DC. A former Jenny McKean Moore Fellow, she is the recipient of multiple poetry fellowship grants from the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities, and is a Best of the Next and Pushcart Prize Finalist. She is a 2025 Pride Fellow and Teaching Artist for the Arts Club of Washington. She was also a founding board member of mothertongue, an LGBTQA+ poetry open mic that lasted for 14 years. Illum competed on the National Poetry Slam circuit and was the 2013 Beltway Grand Slam Champion. Her work has been published on NPR’s Snap Judgement, among various other outlets. Illum earned an MFA in creative writing from American University.

Featured image in this post is, “Pieter Bruegel the Elder – The Tower of Babel (Vienna), Google Art Project edited” By Pieter Brueghel the Elder, licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.

These poems are published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.
 

Lemon Body

a salesman slaps the roof of my body
and declares that it has excellent bones,
but i am a towering jenga pile
teetering and threatening to topple.
i yield where i should be unmovable,
and i creak and groan when i should run smooth.
this beater is destined for the junk yard,
to be salvaged for parts not yet rusted.

but even though my paint is not polished,
and doors that should open require a shove,
she gets me safely from point A to B.
she has velvet-soft seats, feels good in-hand,
and can take the long way, to see the sights.
i hear myself say, she sure is a beaut.
 

Lycanthropy

they say there are two wolves within you
but i’ve only ever had one
            she the formidable alpha
            and i the brittle cage
       straining to keep her contained

in myth, lunar beams beckon her
peeling back black gums baring yellow fangs
a gaping maw shaping the call for her kindred
in reality, she comes unbidden
wild rolling eyes, on all fours heaving
cracking my bones like twigs in her jaws

i know she is close to the surface, rumbling
she thrusts her furred hide against my trembling tender tissue, incessant
threatening to consume me if i dare to keep her inside
unwillingly i pare the layers of my flesh with a finger
slipping underneath, yielding like soft pith inside the peel of an orange
muscle slides over bone below fevered skin, unseamed
her narrow frame sluices through the newfound passage

she discards me like a rabbit
      all the life shaken still
the wolf is out
and all she does is destroy.

Dayne Blair (she/her) is a disabled lesbian writer, artist and philosopher living on Treaty 4 territory; you might remember her as “That Weird Girl From High School.” Her poetry and prose examine queerness, disability, existential dread, and identity through speculative narratives, fantastic imagery, and humour. She has somehow tricked a local writing group, the Pain Poets, into accepting her as their fourth member. When she’s not at work hacking the planet, she’s spending time with her bird-son Artie or watching horror movies with her loved ones.

Featured image in this post is, “Eurasian wolf 2” By Mas3cf, licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.

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.