November 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: “You can never go home”
Curated by Rel Feannag
It sounds like a threat, or a moral tale, or the first line of a tragedy. You can never go home. You can never go back - in time, in place, in body. The heaviest implication: you can never be safe.
Home is not a guarantee. We may think it is, or hope it is, or try to make it that way, but eventually we find that like everything else, we will at some point be separated from it. A non-disabled body is not a guarantee, either - in fact, with age comes disability. You leave home (for better or worse, by force or by choice). You leave the realm of the “abled”.
Disability as a category, as a creation of capitalism, tries to separate us from our bodies. Our physical/mental/emotional selves aren’t allowed into the Home created under settler-colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and white supremacy - all of which funnel into, intertwine with, and create ableism.
In Eli Clare’s book Exile & Pride, he writes about the body as home. He repeats this refrain and explores it in different ways. I’ve found it a perfect framework for this collection of pieces by fellow poets struggling with how, collectively, in a myriad of ways, we are exiled from Home.
“The body as home, but only if it is understood that bodies are never singular, but rather haunted, strengthened, underscored by countless other bodies.” (“ASHES” by Rel Feannag, Nov. 5)
“The body as home, but only if it is understood that place and community and culture burrow deep into our bones.” ("Tumbleweed" By Erubey Mercado, Nov. 12).
“The body as home, but only if it is understood that bodies can be stolen, fed lies and poison, torn away from us.” (“had I known Peace” by Lluvia Bello, Nov. 19).
It is a constant struggle to be wandering, fighting, or fleeing. So it’s of the utmost, crip-justice importance, to remember that our bodies are our home. It cannot be taken, and we cannot be driven from it. We build it anew, with each day of survival. We find it in each other. No matter where we are, there our Home is. We never truly left.