July 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Invisible Disabilities Made Visible in Poetry
Curated by Viktoria Valenzuela
Lucille Clifton asked us to, “come celebrate / with me that every day / something has tried to kill me / and has failed,” in her poem, won’t you celebrate with me. These lines repeat in my mind when having hard days. My disability is invisible. Some days, actually dying seems so near. It is unbearable when the pain causes involuntary writhing. Yet, here I am. Surviving. Thriving. Celebrating us all.
Despite the fact that I suffer with chronic pain from Fibromyalgia exacerbated by PTSD and extreme depression with anxiety, most friends know me as a constantly smiling or giggling person. I am also a constantly-shifting-in-my-seat kind of person. Every sensation, even emotional interactions, registers as pain. I avoid discomfort as much as possible, because as pain builds, I grow weary. This is the natural cycle of my experience with Fibromyalgia.
The poem, I Reach for my Head the Moon, is one part of my account as a postpartum mother and turning forty years old and a response to seeing the drowned bodies of immigrating father and child, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez (25), and his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria, on the daily news. His wife, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, watched from the shore as they were pulled away by a strong river current on the Texas border. Imagining the pull Tania must have felt to watch her child float away prompted the images in my poem.
Body sensations, when evident in poetry can be captivating so when curating this collection, I kept focus on poet friends who also have invisible disabilities and who make specific mention of their lived experiences such as body sensations. What is also important is how the poems are a mark in recent human history.
I am delighted to bring this curation which includes Leslie Contreras Schwartz (July 10), the Poet Laureate of Houston, Texas. She lives with Sjogren’s Syndrome and her poem, Leper on the Lawn, provides a visceral account of her experience with Covid-19 on top of her invisible disability. Poet Bree Rolfe (July 17), lives with the invisible disability of cystic fibrosis and writes about navigating this lifestyle in her book Who’s Going to Love the Dying Girl (Unsolicited Press). The poem, Bone Density Test in the Middle of a Pandemic, gives Rolf’s perspective on being a disabled person during the pandemic.
So many did not survive the trump years, the pandemic, or other disabilities in this country. We lost millions of people who were living with invisible disabilities due to the decisions our government made. Everybody is eventually disabled and at least we have some poems to be a mark in time. Disability poetics is going to continue surviving and thriving.