May 2024
Audio
Would that I Andromeda or Prometheus?
By JA Fields
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Would that I Andromeda or Prometheus?
By JA Fields
I am trying.
My bodymind is trying
but someone left
the keys on
in the driveway
and someone
was at the wrong home.
It’s crass they say scoop
when they mean scalpel
by definition, lack of precision
is crude
I am being pared away
methodically
my body’s unraveling
is a poem
even if it does not rhyme
a poem doesn’t have to rhyme
a poem must not be in order
a poem is disabled prose
a poem looked the wrong way
at a doctor and got titled
hysteria
a poem went to a surgeon
and said fine
it won’t wander any longer
a poem had a structure and
some poet, I think Todd Dillard,
said it’s not done til the scaffolds down
a spine is a scaffold prone
to subluxxation
the poem is partial/ed
from prior de-scaffolding
from scalpelling
someone burned the poem
in a hospital basement
and somebodymind will regret it
for the rest of their life
JA Fields
JA Fields (he/they) is a natural historian, artist, and poet living by the Salish Sea. He is a psychiatric survivor, a survivor of medical negligence, and a cyborg, which is to say he grapples with the medical-industrial complex for access to his own body. You can find him @noncompliantcyborg on many platforms and his first chapbook is available at gum.co/JAFieldschapbook
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