AUTUMN: ENVISIONING JACKSON POLLOCK
After Stephen Kuusisto, Planet of the Blind
In the shaft within
a refracted lens
the sliver of the vase
through which we peer
unravels an experience
wherein
sight, sound, and smell
appear and disappear
in this scene
the senses
are
transfigured:
foliage
mingling
with fragrances of musk -
a lithograph
of wandering figures
roaming toward
the evanescence
of dusk
Autumn's
gauzy visions
halt
time's swift pass
its painted streets a blur
of splattered hues
into whose whispers
visitors trespass
the observer waiting,
a silent muse
such momentary
glimpses
offer hence
the emergent
echoes
of existence
DISABILITY: A NEW GENESIS
After Aimi Hamraie, Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability
Cracked bits
emerge
from the seams
of the street
the curb
cuts
seared into
an earthen ground:
in the crevice
where the self
and world meet
the voices
of the disabled
resound
in the beginning
there was
disability:
diverse forms bespoke
Universal truths
and shaped a
Universe
in harmony
with crips and
cyborgs,
as with age and
youth
yet post-paradise
came
fragmentation
of crip
experience
into being
of a kaleidoscope
of subversion
of normate templates
breaking,
upending
in breaking the
barriers
we create
can we
rebuild
before
it is
too late?
VOICE
After Meryl Alper, Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality
In our tangled
bodies,
what is a
voice?
is it
a word,
an utterance,
a say -
a means of expression,
a gift of choice -
a message heard,
a meaning to convey?
We
who navigate
an amorphous
thread
tread
the space
between
voice
and voicelessness
the fissures amid
the said
and unsaid
in which
our machines
limit
yet transgress
Still
the voice
echoes
from inner chambers
the self
unfurling
from infinite depths
as our tools form
artificial layers
enjoined yet
separate
from our
source
of breath
Even as a pathway
toward voice
we seek
how can we
express
what it means
to speak?
PRECARITY
After Christa Teston, "Rhetoric, Precarity, and mHealth Technologies"
As the virtual
transforms
into the
real
our corporeal
states
are in peril:
as structures
of precarity
reveal
voice is stifled
as systems
go viral
the bodily states
of the
vulnerable
are elided
in the
expanding
call
of progress
through
digital wearables
of health
and well-being
for one,
for all
in the gaps
of what
cannot
be surveilled
our tools silence
our sensory
knowledge
where meaning
is hidden
beneath a veil
which those in power
rarely acknowledge
in the chasm
twixt poverty
and wealth
how can beings
become
restored
to health?
THRESHOLDS
Ability
and disability
intertwine within
our fragmented selves
ever unfolding
toward reality
as morphing forms
into lived spaces
delve
the threshold
that separates
self and
world
breaks
upon collision
of barriers
as fluid bodyminds
emerge unfurled
from the chasms of
built exteriors
yet tensions
erupt
upon collision
as alterities resist
stable forms
coalitions united
in vision
disrupt
seeming harmonies
to transform
though limiting
boundaries
seem to be
still
disabled selves
struggle
to be free
STIMMING
It is
a
strangeness, a
semblance
of thought
that steals into
the corners
of the mind
fragments
of what we seek,
of what we sought
a liberation
from the force
that binds
expanding past
the limits
that constrain
the stimming lurches
us forward,
then back
as we cycle through
circular terrains
imagination
fueling
what we lack
our maps
show what
may been seen
by the eye
a fraught tapestry
into which
we delve
the Other emerging,
distanced from "I"
we encounter
the strangeness
in ourselves
what separates
the self
and the Other
as in wandering,
we become
another?
