Michael Northen

THE INGLIS HOUSE POETRY CONTEST: ONE OF A KIND

(This essay contains all of the first place winning poems from the Inglis House Poetry Contests. Readers who would prefer to read a shorter version that includes only the first lines of the poems can do so by clicking on short.)

As I begin this essay it is mid-way through June 2015. It is eighteen years since I began working in disability literature with the founding of the Inglis House Poetry Workshop in 1997 and over eight years since Wordgathering printed its first issue. By this time in the twenty-first century, it is safe to say that disability poetry is finally getting recognition. The work of poets with disabilities is finding its way into literary magazines, anthologies, poetry festivals, writers conferences and university classrooms. Though it takes a bit of digging, one can also come up with an impressive list of quality single author poetry books and chapbooks. There is no denying that disability poetry has come a long way from the time I first encountered it.

One would think that work by writers with disabilities has pretty much moved into all those venues that could be expected of poetry. This makes it a bit surprising that at the present time there is no national contest dedicated to disability poetry — and even more interesting that for eight years, there was one —the Inglis House Poetry Contest. In his book The Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault talks about continuities. The examination of the circumscribed existence of an object, thinking about what it was. In that spirit, I would like to take a look at the Inglis House Poetry Contest, which existed from 2003-2011, to see how it evolved and what it accomplished, but with the main purpose of allowing readers to read again some of what it produced by reprinting its contest winners.

In 2003, the Inglis House Poetry Workshop consisted of a small group of writers in Philadelphia, all of whom were in wheelchairs. The group met weekly to read and critique each others poetry. It also tried to read the work of other poets with disabilities, but at the time the discovery of and access to that kind of work was difficult. Despite new technology that allowed group members to compose on computer in a way that few of them had been able to by and, they still had little Internet access, and poetry venues held in many of the wonderful old Philadelphia buildings were generally inaccessible to people in wheelchairs. As the introduction to the first Inglis House Chapbook, Why Can't You See Me recounts "In the spring of 2003, the Inglis House Poetry workshop…launched a poetry contest whose main submission criteria was simply that the poems have some connection with disability. The purpose of the contest was twofold — to let others know of the existence of our group and to encourage the writing of quality work on disability."

For the first two years the contest was conducted predominantly through traditional mail. The contest judges were drawn from the original founders of the workshop and included Dana Hirsch, Steven Parker, Stuart Sanderson, Yvette Green and me, with other members sitting in occasionally and offering an opinion. "There was a bit of trepidation on the part of the judges when the submissions seemed at first to trickle in unbearably slowly. By the contest deadline, however, the problem was the exact opposite. How could we choose among so much quality poetry on so many aspects of a topic that needed to be articulated. Nevertheless, we did choose the winners, the prizes were awarded and the winning poems were posted on our website. The first place winner of the contest for the first year was Liesl Jobson of South Africa.

PRAISE POEM FOR AN AFRICAN GIRL

Sound the Kudu horn today
on the strong winds of the Cape
beyond Mpumalanga's banana groves
over KwaZulu's rolling hills
under the clear sunlight of the Karoo
along the coast lines to False Bay
where the icy Atlantic's Benguela
meets the warm Aghulas from India.

Sound the Kudu horn
for the daughter of Deirdre and Dawid
the teen who swam with the whales
from Mandela's Robben Island
to Jan van Riebeeck's Bloubergstrand
to history made today -
the athlete with a disability
in the final of an able-bodied event.

The girl of twelve generations
Huguenots rattled ancestral bones
at the fire that consumed the discarded limb.
Yet how the voices ring now from the earth
shaking the vineyards of the Fairest Cape
from the forests of Knysna birds call triumph
beyond the phantom pains in an absent foot
beyond the hospital bed and the surgeon's saw.

Today we shout the praise of an African girl
a child of the water, heroine of the nation
from the muddy Midmar Mile
from the blue laps of Newlands
from the tidal pools of St. James
to history made on foreign soil
to the gold medals of Manchester
to the handshake of the English queen.

Today the wind carries courage
to all corners of this country, this earth
to each African child that has been damned
to each who has born grief, sorrow, loss.
Let the story be told of Natalie du Toit
for whom drums roll where pain is a ruler
let their rhythms issue forth where despair steals life
let the ancients chant the tale of cruel destiny's defeat.

Sound the Kudu horn today,
pluck the mbira, strike the cowhide!
For all time let one girl be an inspiration
let her courage be sung among the nations.

For all who know sorrow - let them take heart
for all who have known loss - let them find hope
for all who will yet be struck down by Africa's tragedies
let them rise again in victory.

While contests by nature are meant to produce winners, it seemed a disservice to simply jettison all of the wonderful disability-related poetry that did not make it into one of the top three places or honorable mentions. Since its outset the IH Poetry Workshop had been producing chapbooks for its own members, so the next logical step was to produce a chapbook that included much of the contest poetry the group liked but that did not make it into the winner's circle. The result was Why Can't You See Me, which included twenty-three writers. The chapbook was given free to the winners along with their certificates and prize money. Since our purpose was to try to get a greater readerships for the poets included, the last thing we wanted was for our contest to appear to be a money-making gimmick, so writers were included without regard to their purchase of the chapbook. We charged only for additional copies.

The first place winner of the contest for the following year was J. C. Todd with a poem whose title we also appropriated for our second chapbook.

DANCING WITH CECIL

The kitchen streams with music--dulcimer, Jews-harp, blues
harmonica. Rick on cajones, Paco on guitar. Camile's dark
flamenco drums us down into desire, that rumble pit of seed
and root, so when the bright samba flares, everyone is dancing,
even me with clumsy legs too slow for the beat.
The chrome wheels Cecil dances on whirl around my bouncing
and through the ropey sinew of his arm, rhythm
pulses into mine the mystery of his body. Where does lust happen
inside him, I'm wondering, in that muscled swell above
his waist or in the narrow tuck and fold below? how far down
can his nerves fire? from where in the cranium
does appetite arise? Maybe we could lap
dance though I've never, but Ziza has samba'd
up to him, micro-brew hoisted like an amber
torch, hips a set of bongos begging for his touch.

As we had hoped, the second year of the contest brought in a greater number of submissions, but it also made us aware of an unfortunate — if not unexpected —phenomenon. We were receiving far more submission by people with out a disability than by poets with a disability. This ran counter to our hope to promote the work of writers with disabilities. To solve that problem, we made a change for the contest during the third year.

The group decided to have two categories. The first category was open to all writers with the only criteria that the poems submitted had to have some relationship to disability. The second category was open only to writers with disabilities. A writer with a disability could enter either or both categories.

The winner of category one for the 2005 contest was Paul Kahn.

KATHARINE'S ROOM

In Katharine's room I like undressing.
In Katharine's room I crawl out of the shroud of my shame.
I watch her watching me and drink
encouragement from her eyes.

In Katharine's room I shiver in my briefs.
I lie on her table, and she covers me with a sheet.
I pulse between relaxation and anticipation.
My blood is like mercury,
charting the temperature of my desire
for Katharine's touch.

In Katharine's room I submit to her hands.
I close my eyes. Like a cat I drowse in the lap of her care.
My body opens to her like an old, locked diary,
the spine cracking and the dry pages exhaling their secrets.
She reads me with her hands.

In Katharine's room I float, unafraid of gravity.
She is the salt mother.
She will support me.

In Katharine's room I do not hate my body anymore.
In Katharine's room I am happy to have this body
that can feel her friendly heat.
I am happy to let her sculpt me
with her kindness and her hands.
She remakes me into something close to beautiful.

In Katharine's room I do not have to be
only a talking head—all brain and tongue and greedy eyes.
I do not have to talk at all.
There is nothing to say. Words make categories—
harsh lines between the spirit and the flesh,
between the permissible and the forbidden.

Katharine's hands, sliding down my body, blur categories.
In Katharine's room I don't have to decide
what anything means.

Dan Wilkins was the winner of category 2.

HOW?

The door closes
And in the still and silence of my office
The roll of the chair
Creaks and cricks the hardwood floor.

My son, not Two
From the distance
Squeals!
And I mean Sque-e-els with delight!

Running on stubby, falling forward legs,
Hands still raised for balance,
He knows I am here.
He knows I am home.

Suitcase down.
Briefcase down.
Car keys down.
Shoulders aching from the drive.
Ears still popping from the flight.
I drink in the color and smell of home
And I wait.

I await the smile and the touch that mean so much and instantly, magically melt to the "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" Thumping closer,
Thumping louder,
Thumping faster
Through the kitchen and the hall.

Knowing nothing of inertia
He turns the corner
With the grace of an Albatross;
Like a cartoon.

With an Ert, Ert, Ert, Of skidding foot

And groaning concentration,
He barely misses the Jade
And slams into my knees
With a slap of meaty hands
And a triumphant "Ahhh" of teeth
and wild hair.

I bend down close to smell his head.

How do I tell him…
This beautiful boy?
This Beautiful, breathless, excitable boy,
That tonight I will hold and put to bed
When all is said,
And all are fed and done.

How could I tell him.

How will I ever tell him
That to some in this world
I am not worthy.

That to some in this world
I am quite expendable.

That there are those in this world
Who do not know me
(not like he does)

That there are those in this world
Who do not see me
(not like he does)

That there are those in this world
Who would rather have me dead

than Dad.

The chapbook for that year was called Something Close to Beautiful, after a line in Kahn's poem. The cover design took on a more professional look with the inventive photography of Elijah Northen who continued to produce the covers for all of the subsequent chapbooks.

The 2006 contest continued the duel winning system.

Category 1
Ellen LaFleche

ANGEL, WITH PARKINSON'S DISEASE

Angel slaps hash and eggs on a plate,
her body swaying as if on sea legs.

When she shimmies over to the booth
where Joe Dugas is waiting for his breakfast
the plates jingle in her hands
like belly-dance cymbals.

Joe - who lost his ring finger at the mill -
pats her shoulder.     Angel, he murmurs,
and licks sugar off his donut. Joe's touch triggers
a ferocious rippling in Angel's hips.

Her braid strains against its hairnet.

On lunch break Angel slips her tips into the juke.
Alone in a booth she head-bobs to Patsy Cline,
gulps a chocolate milkshake
and a couple of burgers with the works.

At night Angel sits in bed
and lets her twined hair out of captivity.

She thinks of Joe,
still married to Cathy
going on twenty-five years.

Angel's braid unwinds,
graceful as a double helix
opening itself for love.

Joe has never seen the uncoiling
but he can imagine waves of hair
boiling down Angel's back.

All he wants is to swim his nine good fingers
through those crashing breakers.

*

Category 2
Sheila Black

THIS DANCE

We are in the lingo of social workers
self-identifying. The hostess has no trouble
spotting us, leading us to our party,
the long table with the crutches leaned
behind it, a wheelchair
or two, the rest of us,
who limped here across the length of the red
dining room, with the fake Tiffany lights,
the arctic air-conditioning.

I have spent years not wanting
to be this person, squinting at mirrors
as though one distortion could black
out another, don't mention it
and it isn't there—Mother's philosophy.

The afternoon is nearing its end,
the shadows lengthening in the parking lot.
We could be anywhere but we are
here with our stories. Timidly we pull
them out like rare coins, only to discover
how common they are at this table.

Jolie speaks of how she was stoned
every day at the bus. Mike D. remembers the boy
who liked to sneak up behind him
and with a blow to the back of the head
knock him flat to the ground. I tell them about the
beautiful blonde boy who followed me around
the playground all year third grade
screaming Why don't you just die? Freak.

We speculate happily into the dusk
what makes them this way—the normal ones.
We speak of animal behavior and the group ethic,
and we do our best to keep the old
bitterness from our voices.

Then Elaine, wheeling herself restlessly back
and forth in her wheelchair says that what has always
sustained her has been the ballet.
I'm crazy for the dancers, she says, describing
the posters she hung on her wall as girl. Farrell,
Barishnikov, Markova, other names
I've never heard. The art of it. The arms poised still
over the feet moving so fast.

Her vowels go round and rich, her eyes
glaze, brighten, and the rest of us look up to
see the dining room is empty; in the parking
lot darkness has fallen, and we look at Elaine,
her face aglow, her crippled legs

hanging useless, having just demonstrated
the flexibility of the human.

Each year produced changes in either the contest or the resulting chapbook. The 2006 chapbook, Bone and Tissue, was enlarged to include not just poetry, but prose commentary on poetry and disability by writers who had submitted work to the contest. Among the four essays included was one by contest winner Ellen LaFleche discussing the writing of a manuscript that later became a book, Estella with One Lung. It was just such a progression in the publication of disability poetry that the Inglis House Poetry Contest had started out to abet when it was originally launched.

The years 2007 and 2008 produced first place winning poems by Sheila Black, Ona Gritz, Sandra Gail Lambert and (once again) Ellen LaFleche and resulted in the chapbooks " "Slow Dancing to Invisible Music" and "On the Outskirts." As with previous chapbooks, the titles were drawn from a line by one of the poem in the collection.

2007
Category 1
Sheila Black

PARKING LOT

The brick block of the hospital
is gone now, Lynette,
the cracked green tiles
of the basement swimming pool
where attendants dipped our limbs
into the tepid water, stirring
them around like spoons
in soup. It is a parking lot
now, ten floors of empty space,
marked like places where
the beds should go. The cars
in their slots, one on top
of another. Their dead lights
reflect the lights of the street,
the dull glass of the moon
Such simple machines—a key
turns and they whir to life.
Spark to piston, they whiz down
the asphalted lanes,
a maze that leads to the heart
of this place, the basement room
where the swimming pool was,
where we practiced our kicks,
planted our feet, learning to make
step after step. Twenty years
have passed, Lynette. I no longer
walk with a crutch. I have become
one of the others we spoke of.
There is nothing here than can
tell me what I have been.

*

Category 2
Ona Gritz

FIRST ANNIVERSARY

Once, as a child, I had my father
close his eyes for a surprise
then, distractedly walked him
into a wall. Now, guiding you,
I know to mention each curb, each
puddle to be stepped over, to place
your palm on the chipped rail
beside the subway stairs before
I follow you down. All the while
, the tip of your folded white cane
peeks from the side pocket of your pack
like something inner and exposed.
We've spent this year learning one
another. One night, you asked the color
of my hair then repeated the word brown,
an abstract fact to be memorized.
The dark strands were splayed
on your chest as I listened
to the beat beneath skin and rib
and thought about trust, your life
in your hand given over to mine.

 

2008
Category 1
Ellen La Fleche

ESTELLA,WITH ONE LUNG, KEEPS HER APPOINTMENT AT BRENDA'S BEAUTY

Brenda throws in the dye
job for free. She spins Estella
to face the mirror. The lighting is softly
flattering but Estella flinches
to see the blow-dryer aimed
squarely at her temple.

Estella is going to lose her hair
but she comes in anyway
for the weekly Kut And Kurl special.

Brenda ties the plastic apron around Estella's neck
with the brisk efficiency of an x-ray technician.

Estella slouches in the beauty chair.
Not as roomy as the padded chemo
recliner, but it's good comfort along with
the strawberry shampoo and sweet coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

Estella wheezes a little, she chokes. She hasn't got the hang
of it yet: breathing
with one lung gone.

Brenda's lean fingers pleasure Estella's head.
They probe the patchy scalp skin: already
the balding has begun.

Hair pins bob up and down on Brenda's lips.
I'm going to pouf up your curls.
Make your hair look thicker.

Brenda spits out the pins for a puff of cigarette. She turns her head, careful
to exhale the toxic stream away from Estella.

*

Category 2
Sandra Gail Lambert

EXHAUSTION PANTOUM

Sometimes the tears come so quick, I'm shocked.
I mean, I'd really had a great day,
Then surprising as it should not
The exhaustion fell, ending my play.

I mean, I'd really had a great day.
Watching cranes cross the prairie at dusk.
The exhaustion fell, ending my play,
Making me mad, betraying my trust.

Watching cranes cross the prairie at dusk
Infused with the glory of evening
Making me mad, betraying a trust,
Tiredness came, body pinned, mind slowing.

Infused with the glory of evening
I hear my voice, clear and happy, and then
Tiredness came, body pinned, mind slowing.
Gravity ends, choices once open.

I hear my voice, clear, happy, and then
Surprising me as it should not,
Gravity ends choices once open.
Sometimes the tears come so quick, I'm shocked.

During 2007 another important development took place. Even the twenty-nine poems and four essays included in the chapbook seemed to impose limitations on what we hoped to accomplish. The once a year publication of a hard print chapbook that needed to be mailed out to reach its readers made it difficult to publish all of the work that we would like to and, even more importantly, to reach all the readers that we hoped to. As a result, our online journal Wordgathering came into existence.

The first issue of Wordgathering, originally subtitled "A Journal of Disability Poetry" drew heavily on the contest winners above including Liesl Jobson, Ellen LaFleche, Paul Kahn and Sheila Black, but also other contest contributors: Laura Hershey, Anna Evans, Kobus Moolman, Tracy Koretsky and Barbara Crooker. The contest continued as before but now, in addition, we were now able to feature the work of a greater variety of writers. The contest chapbooks also continued, but beginning with the June 2008 issue, all of the contest winning poems were now printed in Wordgathering.

With the 2009, the poetry contest had reached its most expansive form. Contest winners for that year were John C. Mannone and Jimmy Burns; those for the 2010 contest were Gloria Masterson-Johnson. The poetry chapbooks from those two years She Asks for Slippers While Pointing at the Stairs and Their Buoyant Bodies Respond continued the tradition of selecting their titles from a line in one of the poems included.

2009
Category 1
John C. Mannone

HAUNTINGS

No rain to wash the heat away
its waves buffet our faces
soak into our khakis blending
with the desert drab, pale
structures, empty freedoms.

My platoon, in stealth, combs
the quiet buildings, empty rooms.
Hiding in the corner, a mother, baby
snuggled in her hijab, for a moment,
the Madonna and Child,
my wife and son in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
I hear their whimpers, their prayers.

I step toward them, feel
the click, wood against metal,
as if a poltergeist unlatched the pin.
I fling myself on top the woman,
her death muffled
from deafening grenade, shrapnel
meant for her, carving my ears.

Block and timber straddle us,
my back wedges rafters, legs lever,
arms undergird the beams, heave
outstretched to free the woman
and her child.

I couldn't hear the second click.
The explosion that left my limbs
in Falluja, hands still gripping
two-by-fours.

That dismembered house, its soul
leaked out, inrushed with nightmares
of urban bombs, the ghost of men.
It can't feel
its family through the rubble,
the concrete, the lumber debris.
They'd rebuild the house,
the haunting remains.

Doctors said I'd be alright,
but no one warned me
of the demons hanging on
ends of nerves. Haunted by ghost
pain, prosthetics for disembodi-
ments with no memory for fingers.

I can no longer hear the beating
of the distant drums, or hearts,
only the static hiss of its snare,
your voice lost in gray noise.

I am haunted by the sound
of your voice. I am haunted
by the touch of your breasts.

*

Category 2
Jimmy Burns

TRANSMORGRIFICATION

The poet stared at the hospital ceiling

dust genies and dreams

collide
fade
aware of

things that were
could not be again

but accepted

joyful noise
could evolve
into anthems

from blends of frustrations
and fresh experience.

The poetry in his head

continued.

 

2010
Category 1
Liz Whiteacre

TRASHCAN, UNMOVED

At dawn, I wake alone with a start
—crutch quietly with precision
like my first drive alone in the Escort:
the carpet foreboding as rush hour traffic,
the furniture fierce as intersections,
the tile sneaky as ice. Stepping so gingerly
my brace, sleep sweaty, does not move,
my aluminum crutches lift up and up.
We labor toward the kitchen.
It takes twenty minutes, these twenty odd paces.

All the bags shoved into the ugly black can reek
of decomposed chicken carcass, sanitary
napkins, and other rank food stuffs that
cannot wait until the next collection.

The can's belly is less than the width
of the door, but how to move it?
I can't heave it up and march to the curb.
Not anymore.
It thuds when tapped at its base
by my crutch's toe. It won't budge,
and pain shoots down my back, down my legs.

I live alone. I live alone in an alley
in a shitty apartment.
Two hours until pick up–
two hours to get this can to the curb.

Kicking with foot, shoving with knee, sliding
with chair and crutch, I curse and cry
and pop Vicodin and eat a granola bar.
Frustration floods my pores, the sweet sweat
I remember from childhood when Mom flipped
flash cards for mathematics, sitting parallel
to me on the hard dining room chairs.
The trash can finally looms on the threshold's lip,
ready to stumble down the stairs.
I duct-tape the lid, so it won't spill in flight.

Crutch cocked like shotgun, it leaps toward the
ugly can, launches it with furious chutzpah,
down the steps, and there the ugly can lay, unbroken,
at the bottom. Muscle spasms seize my back.

Spent and beaten, I'm a young woman who witnesses
what random accident can do to flesh and bone,
who is patched together with medications,
elastic, velcro, metal, wires, hope, who's incapable
of domestic chores so simple as taking out the trash.

Later that morning, this young woman crutches
forty minutes from her handicap spot in the closest
parking lot to work, thinking of the trash can,
lying lifeless on its smooth unscuffed belly
on the cracked sidewalk, like the dead kitten
she'd found after school by the curb in front of her home.
She feels her sweaty, chafed armpits moan,
wipes them with paper towel after taking
thirty minutes to pee. Then, she smiles at co-workers,
says,  I'm great. Thanks for asking. 

*

Category 2
Gloria Masterson-Richardson

TRAPPED

Only a window separates the winter
   dark from the fluorescent lights overhead
      in my hospital room, a world

of gated beds, of humming monitors –
   blinking red, then green – of IV trees
       trailing tubes of sugar water, blood

or morphine in their branches. A net
   of electrodes and cords pins me to my bed.
        I cry out but no one comes.

On the granite bluff outside my room
   two sentinel oaks stripped of leaves
       by November rains, grip the rockface.

Boulders fester with green lichen
   and dead vines twist around fallen trees.
       I wait for the coyote to come

as he does every morning,
   slinking down the steep path, pointed nose
       close to the ground, tracking his careless prey –

a kit fox looking for mice or moles.
   He pounces, clamps the luckless kit
       in his jaws and trots back to his den.

Coyote will return again, I know.
   I too am being stalked.
       I fear the shattering of the glass.

Their Buoyant Bodies Respond contained two features that had not appeared in prior chapbooks. The first was a section at the end the book asking each of the eight contest winners (places 1-3 and honorable mention for each category) to comment on the genesis of their winning poem. The second, somewhat prophetically, was the inclusion of the cover artwork from each of the previous chapbooks. For a variety of reasons that all converged, 2011 was the last year of the contest. Though the two final first place winners, Meg Eden and Kobus Moolman, were poets whose were had appear in previous contest and chapbooks, no chapbook resulted from the final year of the contest.

2011
Category 1
Meg Eden

the order of things


1.the letter A is red. she is the leader, the heroine, type A personality. she rescues people, and she

    always has a plan. she is a little like the number nine, except nine is the villain.

    

                 and if you mix three and six, you get strawberry-raspberry. I mean, if you mix six and

                 eight, you get raspberry swirl. so when the answer  to my math problem is 68, my mouth

                 tastes like berries and I want to go to get ice-cream sticks.

                 

                              when you subtract numbers, the song is minor and sad, but if you add numbers,

                              the tune is major and everything is happy. I like it when my math ends with an

                              addition or a multiplication problem because that means all the numbers got

                              along and nine didn't hurt anyone.

                                          

                                          seven and three are teal and yellow, I mean seven and nine are teal and

                                          yellow, and three is something between orange and red, or some warm

                                          color, but I can never see her for a long enough time to tell.

                                          

2.the letter a is blue and a boy and he's lower-case. small. no one gives him much notice because he

    is just placed in words. e is a big boy, I mean, E is a girl, and she has pigtails and is yellow. O is

    older, larger, dark blue or purple, I is a skinny boy with front teeth, tall and lanky, blue, grinning

    U is older and larger than O, like a grown up.

    

                 and they're all friends. they make things better. they save confused normal people, old

                 people, consonants. they make words. I don't always think about it like that; I just

                 know that they are very important kids. kids are very important, and I think we all know

                 this.

                 

3.We're in math and I can't remember why the answer twenty five feels right. is it because that's

     what oreos are: black and blue. does that make it the square of five? it sounds like a nice number,

     complete, five makes things sound finished.

     

                  I think three is a chameleon. she changes based on what other numbers are around her.

                  sometimes she's yellow, and sometimes orange and sometimes I can't tell because she is

                  very clever for her age.

                  

                                 there are no green numbers.

                                 

                                              seven and nine look good together, maybe because seven is calm and is

                                              a boy and nine is loud and bossy and is a girl. eight is purple and shy;

                                              four is mango-colored, and one is red, like A, so maybe the story

                                              should go:

                                              

4.there once was an A and 1, and they both started the whole story. They are very important

    because they set the order. They keep peace. And most of all, they're both very nice.

*

Category 2
Kobus Moolman

THE HAND

This is the hand. Talking.

This is me. Holding up the hand
and looking hard into it.

Is anyone listening?

The hand swims through the quick
water of daylight, through the slow
water of the night.
The hand burns during the day and
curls into brown smoke.
The hand burns at night and
crackles with electricity.
It jumps when anyone walks past.
It gasps and swallows short breaths
and stumbles over its broken teeth
when anyone asks it a question.

Is anyone listening?

I do not want to listen.
I do not want to sit and wait,
holding the hand in my hand
like a woman in the cold, a woman in the
cold and the dark cradling a dead child,
like a woman cradling nothing.

I hear the hand all day.
I hear it whispering behind walls.
Behind thin doors.
I hear it in my dreams. In my desire.

My lust is filled with the dark
blood of the hand, the dark light
that pulls, that calls, pulls
like a heavy rope at my heart.

I look at the hand and see
the scars of fires and knives.
I look at the hand and see
the calluses of stones and sticks.

I look at the hand and hear
the slow bending of bone, the curling
tongue of tissue and vein as the old words of my heart
close upon themselves like a leaf,
like the leaves of plants in dry lands
desperate to preserve the little that
remains in their veins.

I hear the hand call out and I turn my back.

I turn away from the sight of its large fingers
curled around the hole in my back,
its hard skin closing tightly like a
scar over the site of so many scalpels,
the loss of so many shoes.
The absence of feeling. Of so many feelings.
The feeling of being me, when I am so
few other things too.

This is the hand. Talking.

This is me. Not talking
to the one who exists at the still centre of the storm.
The one I have never seen. Only smelt.
The smell of lost flowers.
The smell of lost hair.
Eyes that opened once, flashed
like water under the sun,
spontaneously, and then were gone.
Beneath the black rock of fear.

This is me. Talking.

I cannot do anything else.
Cannot run, jump, climb, skip,
hurry, walk to the end of the sky.
Barely stand without falling over.
Because it is only the hand that
holds me up, that holds me onto
the narrow path, where there are no handholds,
only deep and empty falling.

But the hand is mortal.
It is not God.

It must burn.

Is anyone listening?

While the 2011 year ended the Inglis House Poetry Contest, the work of many of the writers continued to make their appearances in Wordgathering. The journal, in some sense took over the work that the contest began, the gathering together and championing of poetry by writers with disabilities. 2011 also gave the work of the poetry contest another incarnation. It saw the publication of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, that I was privileged to join Sheila Black and Jennifer Bartlett in editing. While Sheila and Jen drew on their own wealth of resources contributing the work of man academic and experimental writers, the anthology included the work of a number of writers who had participated in the Inglis House poetry contest including Laura Hershey, Ona Gritz, Jim Ferris, Daniel Simpson, Kathi Wolfe and Raymond Luczak. As of this point in time BIAV, is listed by World Cat as having a place in over 400 national and international libraries, and is used throughout the United States in college courses. That is no small accomplishment for a contest that began with a handful of wheelchair-using writers in a Philadelphia workshop.

Despite this transformation, there is still a hole left by the absence of the IH Poetry contest. And it is not a small one. While April blooms poetry contests of almost every variety, there is still no national contest that is dedicated solely to the work of poets with disabilities or even to disability related poetry. That is a task that needs to be taken up.

 

Michael Northen is the editor of Wordgathering and an editor with Jennifer Bartlett and Sheila Black of the anthology Beauty is a Verb: the New Poetry of Disability. He is also an editor of the upcoming anthology of disabiity short fiction, The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked (Cinco Puntos Press).