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?

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