May 2022
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: The Personal & Political Archive
Curated by Tarik Dobbs
In this month’s Zoeglossia Poem of the Week, Poets Justin Greene (May 9), Ros Seamark (May 16), Simone Person (May 23), and myself (May 2) write about disability as spoken through archives—whether personal, political, institutional, or a combination of these histories. As I gathered these poets, I had a few thematic interests in mind: the body and its subjugation by the lower-case state, the histories of disabilities forgotten, found, and re-written, as well as the personal relationships which we hold, reject, and heal from alongside illness.
In Greene’s “Case III,” he writes, “his shit // movements / resisting every means of // treatment.” Here, erasure is mobilized to politicize and re-contextualize scientific, eugenicist language.
In Seamark’s “Overhearing an Argument on the Morality of Writing Body Horror from my Federally-Protected Seat on Bay Area Rapid Transit,” they mark an existential anxiety, “don’t you have a body? And aren’t you afraid?” What is it to be a disabled body in the bounds of an ableist, capitalist lower-case-s state?
In Person’s “A Brief History of My Failed Suicide Attempts,” the speaker spans a coming-of-age within their personal archive of illness and intertwining of interpersonal relationships, stating “Maybe I don’t find Death but make it.”
And in my visual (+ archival) poem, “A Syndrome Receives His Lifetime Service Award,” I take up the task of addressing my/our disabled body on full display. In the absurd fashion of eugenics, disability histories, Poland Syndrome (my condition) is named for the doctor who experimented on a dead prisoner’s body. In this poem, I wish to memorialize George Elt, who’s body so closely resembles mine. Under the cruelty of eugenics, we must namesake ourselves.
As a diverse community of writers, I aim for a range in aesthetics and perspectives, and I hope these poems evoke solace and a sense of community.