Poem of the Week
Throughout the year, Zoeglossia invites a poet to curate the Poem of the Week. If you would like to guest curate, have questions, or want more information about POTW, please email poemoftheweek@zoeglossia.org.
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From left to right: Leah Nieboer (March 3), Shamala Gallagher (March 10), and Genevieve Arlie (March 17).
Even after years of flares and remissions, of crash cycles at intervals of hours to years, you doubt your capacity to heal. The caves of fatigue are so singularly deep as to resist recognition; each crash feels like the last crash, the one you won’t rebound from. It takes more years to realize you despair in proportion to your physical state. The harder the crash, the bluer your mood. You need to rest, drink tea, drink cocoa, drink saltwater (so, hydrate), do absolutely whatever you want within the limits of what you can and must, sleep early, and try again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
From left to right: Leslie McIntosh (Feb. 4), Said Shaiye (Feb. 11), and Joel Dias-Porter (Feb. 18).
I’m currently interested in the appearance and disappearance of voice in a poem—who is speaking and from where? What relationship does a reader–or listener–have to the voice of the poem? You, reader, are you being addressed or ignored? Do you have an expectation either way? FYI: These poems don’t owe you anything.
Sorry, not sorry.
December 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Finding the Body on the Page
Curated by Stephen Lightbown
From left to right: Kyla Jameson (Dec. 3), Jamie Hale (Dec. 10), Rick Dove (Dec. 17), and Stephen Lightbown (Dec. 24).
In his essential book from 2014, The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk examines how individuals are affected by traumatic stress, and its effects on the mind and body. He states that; “One of the clearest lessons from contemporary neuroscience is that our sense of ourselves is anchored in a vital connection with our bodies.”
From left to right: Rel Feannag (Nov. 5), Erubey Mercado (Nov. 12), and Lluvia Bello (Nov. 19).
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.
October 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Flows of Disability: Some Tails Of Crip Survival
Curated by Jessica Suzanne Stokes
From left to right: Johnson Cheu (Oct. 1), Stephanie Heit (Oct. 8), Naomi Ortiz (Oct. 15), and Jessica Suzanne Stokes (Oct.22)
In 1978, Bette Midler took to the stage wearing a blue mermaid tail in the persona of Delores De Lago. This mermaid persona opened new worlds for Midler as a performer and offered wild potential for her stages. Adorned with sequins and simulated coral, Midler performed disco hits such as Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” using electric wheelchairs for choreography. This image might be written off as a visual joke playing with the phrase, “a fish out of water” or as yet another joke at the expense of disabled people. But a mermaid isn’t a fish. She’s sexy and dangerous.
From left to right: Gaia Thomas (Sept. 3), Christine Robbins (Sept. 10), Ava C. Cipri (Sept. 17), and Elizabeth Meade (Sept. 24).
Calling back the dead, or simply calling to the dead. Or maybe just cursing the dead. In any case, this series deals with the tin can phoneline to the other realm. What parts of us are on the other side? Let’s begin at the ending. The swan’s wing in Elizabeth Meade’s (Sept. 24) poem reminds me of the swan’s wing burial site. Six thousand years ago, a Danish mother was laid to rest beside her infant child on the wing of a swan. It’s thought the bird was chosen for its ability to transcend the realms of land, water, and air. In my imagination, the wing acts as spirit boat for her journey with her child to the other side.
August 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: On Navigating Love & Disability Across North America
Curated By Kimberly Jae
From left to right: Lisa Shen (Aug. 6), Merrick Soleil (Aug. 13), Charlie Petch (Aug. 20), and Kimberly Jae (Aug. 27).
Whether one has lived with disability since birth, or as I did, woke up one morning to find yourself suddenly disabled, we have quickly learned that the able-bodied world views us through a different lens. There is a hierarchy to the disability identity. Visibly disabled people deemed to have suffered more than invisibly disabled people. Physically disabled people to have more value than a person with a mental health disability.
July 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Invisible Disabilities Made Visible in Poetry
Curated by Viktoria Valenzuela
From left to right: Leslie Contreras Schwartz (July 10), Bree Rolfe (July 17), and Viktoria Valenzuela (July 24).
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.
April 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Zoeglossia at AWP2023
Curated by Zoeglossia Staff
Last month, Zoeglossia attended the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) annual conference in Seattle and captured the experience on video. We present this as this month’s curation.
March 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Swarms of Grace: On the Poetic Gifts of Day, Tyler, Klein, and Monet
Curated by Ricky Ray
From left to right: Meg Day (March 6), Bethan Tyler (March 13), Francis Klein (March 20), Arianna Monet (March 27), and Ricky Ray (April 3).
There’s a school of thought that says poems are spells cast to conjure hidden alcoves in mystery, alcoves we mightn’t otherwise access or know existed. A school that says, having imbibed these “poems,” these actively evolving generativities, we are thus drugged with their starsongs, their many-billion-year-percolating rhythms and valences. A school that says these spells are animate presences entwining with and enlarging our own, encouraging us to more deeply encounter ourselves and our arrangements under their influence.
February 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Black Disability History is Black History
Curated by Zoeglossia Staff
From left to right: Saleem Hue Penny (Feb. 6), Airea D. Matthews (Feb. 13), Alayna Powell (Feb. 20), Leroy F. Moore (Feb. 27).
To be Black, disabled, and a poet is to make one’s life into an archive, into an imprint of memory, and an eternal grimoire. There is alchemy in how we continue to survive. We live in the belly of a settler colonial empire determined to eradicate our culture and humanity. This month’s curation is intended to be a portal into the realities of Black disabled contemporary poets.
January 2023
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Uncertainty, Intrusive Thoughts, and Dis/Embodiment in OCD Poetics
Curated by Raye Hendrix
From left to right: Raye Hendrix (Jan. 8), Dani Putney (Jan. 15), Alyssandra Tobin (Jan. 22), and Shiksha Dheda (Jan. 29).
Maybe it’s because I’m a Capricorn, the star sign that both ends and begins the year, but it feels significant to me to be curating the December 2022/January 2023 Poet-of-the-Week installment. It also feels significant because beginnings and endings deal, in a sense, with certainty, which is something people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)—like the poets I’ve put in conversation here—crave, but cannot ever truly have.
November/December 2022
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Lineage. Grounding, and the Story of Self
Curated by Liv Mammone
From left to right: Jessica Reidy (Nov. 27), Nathan Say (Dec. 4), Alice Page (Dec. 11), and E.J. Schoenborn (Dec. 18).
In the last several weeks, to say nothing of the first few years of this decade, I have attended several truly crack-the-soul-open, very queer, very disabled book releases. E.J. Schoenborn’s release party for their chapbook, The Eye Opens, was a virtual church of queer chronically ill poets including my dear friends Gigi Bella G, Adrienne Novy, and Alice Page.
October 2022
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Giving Ourselves Room to Honor Our Individual, Private Selves
Curated by Nathan Spoon
From left to right: Nathan Spoon (Oct. 3), Sage Ravenwood (Oct. 10), Gaia Thomas (Oct. 17), and Christopher Phelps (Oct. 24).
In recent years, I have a growing interest in personal, intimate expressions by disabled people in poetry. So often being disabled means living in ways that involve facing one challenge after another. It is easy to feel that we are somehow shirking responsibility to our larger community by taking a step back and by giving ourselves room to honor our individual, private selves.
September 2022
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: F.I.R.E (four 🔥 iridescent 🔥 revolving 🔥 ellipses)
Curated by Saleem Hue Penny
From left to right: Kimberly Jae (Sept.5), Pinka PopsicKle (Sept. 12), Leslie McIntosh (Sept. 19), and Walela Nehanda (Sept. 26).
Together, these poets and their selected works can be described by the acronym F.I.R.E: Four, Iridescent, Revolving, Ellipses. I was honored to experience these poets’ dynamism and passion during the 2022 [margins.] conference. After blessing us with insightful, vulnerable, melancholic pieces, we held a panel discussion about how disabled poets and creatives approach digital/social content creation in an ableist/capitalist landscape determined to commodify our disabled identities.
August 2022
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Crip Grammars and the Fullness of “Silence”
Curated by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
From left to right: heidi andrea restrepo rhodes (Aug. 1), JJJJJerome Ellis (Aug.8), Hannah Emerson (Aug. 15), and Tala Khanmalek (Aug. 22).
To speak of “crip grammars” reaches for the multitude of ways that disability structures language against and outside of the norms of language’s compulsory ableism. We, and our uses of language, are often seen by ableist society as “afflicted” or “defective”—judgments made to delegitimate the methods and modalities through which we’ve come to communicate ourselves to the world. The silences and contortions of bodily time and space that shape our speech patterns are often read as failures.
From Left to right: Kris Ringman (June 6), Arthur Durkee (June 13), and Raymond Luczak (June 20).
What does it mean to queer our own disabilities?
When we are diagnosed as disabled, we are often reminded by those who are able-bodied how they wouldn’t want to live with the bodies we are given. It’s hardly surprising that we don’t feel desirable as a result. Not just socially, but also romantically and sexually. We end up being far critical of our own bodies. We fall into the rabbit hole of feeling crappy.
From left to right: Tarik Dobbs, Justin Greene, Ros Seamark, Simone Person.
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.
April 2022
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Staff Picks in Celebration of National Poetry Month
Curated by Zoeglossia Staff
From left to right: Camisha L. Jones, Matthew Siegel, Airea D. Matthews, and Aurora Levins Morales.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, we offer some of our favorite poems, handpicked by Staff.
Because I love the way it sounds, I’m thrilled to choose Camisha Jones’ powerful performance poem, “My Hearing Loss Interrogates the World.” I think it’s an electric piece of spoken word, where the disability holds the agency as the poet contemplates interactions with others. It’s exciting to my ear because of the poet’s inflections, connotations, and her use of repetition. This makes it perfect for audio. I invite you to read along as you listen. - Tonya Suther, webmaster
March 2022
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: What Tethers Us?: Poems that Sound the Depths of Connection
From left to right: Ellen McGrath Smith, Jill Khoury, Jason Irwin, and Emilio Rodriguez.
This weekend, we installed a new cable modem for our smart TV, and one of the results has been that the closed captioning won't work for the series I have been watching. I tried to get through an episode last night without captions but grew weary. I lost interest, since I was catching only about 25 percent of the dialogue. I'm sure we'll be able to troubleshoot this glitch, but the whole experience reminds me of the years of my life spent blaming my "bad ears" for my lack of access—to what teachers were saying, what peers were saying, what everyone was saying.
February 2022
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Decolonizing Disability Poetics
Curated by Urayoán Noel
From left to right: Suzi Garcia, Urayoán Noel, Jasminne Mendez, and Aurora Levins Morales.
Welcome to February’s Zoeglossia Poem of the Week. For this month, I am excited to feature along with my own work (Feb. 14), poems by Suzi Garcia (Feb. 7), Jasminne Mendez (Feb. 21), and Aurora Levins Morales (Feb. 28).
Their work represents a range of embodied geographies and aesthetics, and they all inspire my own creative and critical work at the intersections of decoloniality and disability. While the four of us have roots/routes in Latin America, I am interested here in decentering hegemonic Latinidad as a formation that is entangled with and risks reproducing eugenic logics.
January 2022
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: Poetry & Mental Health Difference
Curated by Stephanie Heit
From left to right: Stephanie Heit, Nazifa Islam, Roxanna Bennett, and Airea D. Matthews.
Welcome to a new year and January’s Zoeglossia Poem of the Week. This month features poets that identify around mental health difference, madness, mental illness, or however each individual prefers to call their lived experience. I’m delighted to guest curate these offerings; I identify as bipolar and as a survivor of shock treatments and multiple psych hospitalizations. I’m eager for you to read the poetry of Nazifa Islam (Jan. 10), Roxanna Bennett (Jan. 17), and Airea D. Matthews (Jan. 24). These poets’ work scratches, slurs, and wrecks its way into the multisyllabic heartbeat of what it means to live with madness’ unpredictable pulse.
June 7, 2021
Echolalia
After “A”-19
By Noa/h Fields
In other sounds
E wants a mother
anchor I hear
bad. Trachea,
trace—translate
his. Chase
May 31, 2021
My Hearing Loss Interrogates the World
By Camisha L. Jones
Why so loud?
Why the mob of noise?
Why the clatter of simultaneous speech?
Why your words such rapid fire?
Such hurdling train?
You wanna run me over?
Wanna leave me in your tracks?
May 24, 2021
Listening in the Dark
By Meg Day
Even in this light, I can see
your want. A gulley appears
in the hard bare field between
those fenced brows & opens
into shallow beds tilled, temple
to temple, as if the glut of a flood
May 17, 2021
US Dept. of Justice Erasure for (law) Enforcement (officers)
By Saleem Hue Penny
May 10, 2021
Dual
By Jimena Lucero
May 3, 2021
To the Boy Who Walks Backwards Everywhere He Goes
By Ina Cariño
April 26, 2021
prayer as wall of fire
By Khairani Barokka
April 19, 2021
Top Secret Club Abjection
By Ashna Ali
April 12, 2021
Sick 4 Sick
By Kay Ulanday Barrett
Her body patched, swollen skin,
hair flecks gone rogue, mismatch
knees, ache knits quilt through out.
Curvature, a soft thing.
They said
if we hum close,
close enough that our chests touch,
shared breath comes from belly up,
—that, that is not platonic.
April 5, 2021
This poem isn't interested in my exhaustion
By Matthew Siegel
only how it can open itself,
carve a valley through my fear.
I want to name each feeling
and let each name go.
There is a place in me
where I have never been sick.
March 29, 2021
each winter convinced that i am dying
the signs point to no the crow balanced
on my hospital bed laughs i
do not laugh back it's how the days
curl in on themselves wincing from cold
they do not wish to be out after dark
and suddenly
March 22, 2021
Ear Trumpet, possibly used during a period of mourning, Europe, 1850-1910
- Science Museum Group Collection
1.
In life she listened to me. Or at least tried.
Out of kindness, I raised my voice
to make her understand. Now I have died,
my dumb widow must mourn. My choice
of ear trumpet will be held to her deaf ear
with its ornate black lace collar and bow.
March 15, 2021
Examinations by Jasmine Cooray
Cartwheels, if you would, at least one, or if not,
then cut some shapes on this dancefloor.
No? Ah - then let us see you carry home
your own shopping. Or please knead this bread.
Open this can of beans. Hold this pen and make
legible words with it, properly spelled if you would.
February 28, 2021
Smash the Bells
By Margaret Ricketts (1969-2021)
Smash the bells,
They boardcast
Our failure to draw
Together.
Burn the masks.
MSNBC
CNN
February 7, 2021
How to Wheel
By Karl Knights
The zoo is tough terrain; hilly.
I wheel as fast as I can –
then mum shouts ‘keep up!’
I stop. ‘Hand me my crutches.’
January 31, 2021
SNOW DAYS UP NORTH by Ramond Luczak
Pulled up into long johns, zipped into
snowmobiler’s pants, ski cap pulled tight
down to my eyebrows, layered mittens strung
like telephone wires inside my jacket, I was
January 25, 2021
This week, we are pleased to highlight the work of 2019 Fellow Genevieve Arlie.
January 18, 2021
Zoeglossia is proud to highlight the work of 2020 Fellow Alayna Powell.
January 13, 2021
This week, we are pleased to feature Sean Mahoney’s work. Sean is a 2020 Zoeglossia Fellow. With Mike Northen, Sean has run the DisLit Consortium for many years.
January 8, 2021
For the poem of the week, we are delighted to have work by 2020 Fellow Kimberly Jae. To preserve Kimberly’s line breaks, we have included a PDF. If it is too hard to read, in size, please contact us.
January 1, 2021
HAPPY NEW YEAR! We begin the year with poems by our lovely 2019 and 2020 Fellows. We would like to open this year with a poem by Zoe Stroller.
December 18, 2020
Larry Eigner’s poems and prose were unusual in that they influenced so many different poetic “schools.” Eigner’s poem of the week is one in which exhibits both his leanings toward Olson’s concept of Projective Verse and eco-poetics.
December 14, 2020
A note about Larry Eigner and Robert Duncan: Black Mountain poet, Robert Duncan, was one of the poets who was considerably influenced by Larry Eigner’s work. Duncan was an early advocate for Eigner’s poetry and was seminal to his inclusion in New American Poetry 1945-1960. Duncan who once confessed that “Larry Eigner belongs not to my appreciations, but to my immediate concerns in living,” edited and helped type Eigner’s collection Another Time in Fragments.
December 11, 2020
For the month of December, we will be dedicating the "Poem of the Week” series to Larry Eigner. Eigner (1927–1996) wrote over three thousand poems on a manual Royal typewriter (a bar mitzvah gift) with the thumb and index finger of his right hand.
Nov. 30, 2020
MOUNTAIN SWEEP
By Quintan Ana Wikswo
Oh bone of my bone, an asylum pelvis striped bare of future kin.
Oh flesh of my flesh, brain etherized upon the table
in electrocutional display.
Nov. 23, 2020
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Zoeglossia to all of you! We look forward to celebrating Thanksgiving with loved ones and will resume the Poem of the Week, curated this month by Kenny Fries, after the holiday. Please sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news and updates.
Travis Chi Wing Lau
Nov. 16, 2020
Epistle to Copy of a Kouros
In hand and foot and mind
alike foursquare fashioned
without flaw,
your fragile youth,
Dolomitic, though
soft in gaze, for
you are what others
see upon you,
you are what others
want to see,
even when kalos
erodes. Read More >>
Nov. 9, 2020
To the Non-Disabled White Grrrl with the Frida Kahlo Altar in the Living Room
Naomi Ortiz
Grrrl, if you’re going to gush to me about Frida,
you better be prepared with an intimate knowledge of nightmares
Those many things in life beyond your control and know them well enough to call their name
You better have experience of body meeting surgical knife
with a man who thinks he knows just how to fix you, holding the hilt
Khairani Barokka
Nov. 2, 2020
dedication
which noble ode to life will you attach to my bodily rhythms
which mouth open to mortality will you falsely pin to my nerves
as now you imagine patting my hairs and lifting my inner thigh
Keith Jones
Aug. 22, 2020
“DealWitIt”
Mr. Jones lyrics of his Hip-Hop song
the only threat that i pose i suppose is that good ol boy code makes my melanin the weapon and a simple suggestion can alter my life's direction full stop minimun full clip 12 shots the response is at best a hashtag tshirts and protests and yes im stressed wit
Ottis Smith
Aug. 14, 2020
She said I pointed out to you the stars
And yet all you saw was the tip of my finger
See what you didn’t see
Is that most of those stars died centuries ago
And it took centuries more for you to finally see
Evidence that they ever existed
Their memory crossed solar systems
Read More >>
Lateef McCleod
Aug. 6, 2020
Why are you scared of me?
As a child I knew I was
good,
adorable,
and safe.
Because that was what my parents told me,
that was what my grandma told me,
Leroy F. Moore Jr.
July 28, 2020
Brotherly Love With A Limp
Got to show it
Got to be about it
Take off that macho shit
Nothing but brotherly love with a limp
My twenties & thirties are over
In my fifties I need it
So I provide that space to get together