Kathi Wolfe
OBJECT WAITING TO BE DANGEROUS: an Uppity Blind Girl Poem*
My cane, a plowshare,
digging, day-in, day-out
into the ground,
gently tapping
fire hydrants,
bicycle wheels,
— the scuffed
shoe soles of everyone
from cops to docs —
peeping toms to soccer moms —
longs to breakdance —
flip and rock — glide
and slide — not just
on the sidewalk
but in the middle of the road —
to stop the show
for the president's motorcade —
the ladies-who-lunch brigade.
It wants to be the sword
to end all swords,
fencing with a wicked witch
who turns all who cross
her into plowshares.
*The title for this poem was inspired by "Objects Waiting to be Dangerous"
by Sheila Black. The title for Black’s poem was inspired by "Things Waiting to Be
Dangerous" by Reginald Shepherd.
* * *
UKELE
The last thing I saw, the old blind lady says,
was Arthur Godfrey on TV playing
the ukulele, between singing the virtues
of Chesterfield cigarettes and swooning
before the Ice Queen, the Frigadaire.
Since then it's been smoke and mirrors.
No ciggies. No need to defrost the fridge.
Still, ashes land in my coffee cup,
ukulele strings pluck my ears,
the fridge watches over me
through the eyes in the back of its head.
* * *
SELF-PORTRAIT DURING TOTAL ECLIPSE
an Uppity Blind Girl poem
Cool head looking up
locking eyes
with the blindness
god cavorting
with the sun
Brailling the moon.
Kathi Wolfe work's has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The New York Times, Wordgathering and other publications. Her most recent
collection The Uppity Blind Girl Poems, winner of the Stonewall Prize, was published by BrickHouse Books. She was a contributor to the
anthologies QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology and Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. She was a Lambda Literary Foundation 2008 Emerging Writer Fellow.
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