Micro Mutant Postcard #20
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
Speak to me, Billie, and to hell with any generation gaps. We unconventional types must stick together. Lyrics about our Mad Mutant grief reveal that you’re the teacher now. I am so in love with the Mad Crip time coming for me, unlocked and ready.
Image description/alt-text: Lock screen for an iPad. A blurry, nondescript picture from an X-Men comic is in the background. In the center are the words “Enter passcode” above four small semi-transparent circles. Below this is a telephone-style number pad from 1 to 0 with the word “Cancel” in small letters adjacent to the number 0.
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Micro Mutant Postcard #39
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
Invisible girl, invisible woman, invisible. I grew, I aged, I mutated into this body, and still I can’t be seen. My force fields are currently lacking. But other barriers remain, away from the downward spiral. Doctor Doom can keep calm; Latveria is safe from me.
Image description/alt-text: Blurry photograph of the author at 10 years old with shoulder length brown hair, squinting at the camera, wearing glasses, a gold long-sleeve velour shirt and blue jeans. I am standing on railroad tracks and behind me are brown weeds and a green pine tree.
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Micro Mutant Postcard #52
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
Come on, Pyro, light my fire. Bring me to life. I bounce between wanting and seeking my Mutant [re]birth. Chemistry is just a series of trades, a simple swap of fundamental elements. No lies: my pants aren’t really aflame. But no cameras, please, no cameras.
Image description/alt-text: A sunset reflected off an outlet off the Erie Canal near the Clyde River in Central New York. There are wisps of clouds across the top and shades of purple, pink, and yellow are in the sky. Miscellaneous motor boats are on each side and a walkway bridge is reflected in the water.
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Author Note:
The Micro Mutant Postcard Project is an ongoing endeavor seeking to meld poetry, confessions, memoir, and imagery with pop culture, especially comic books, and identity, including disability, using specific conventions to bring forth creativity and explore intersections the author has perhaps not yet publicly revealed.
Kudos go to Diane Wiener, Stephen Kuusisto, Dan Simpson, Ona Gritz, Minnie-Bruce Pratt, Emily Michaels, and my 2012 Maymester WRT 438 Advanced Creative Nonfiction cohort at Syracuse University, for their contributions to this endeavor.
Select postcards were published as Flash Memoir in the December 2020 issue of Wordgathering; other postcards were published in the Summer 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Summer 2022, and Fall 2022 issues of Wordgathering, as well as a Micro flash contribution for the “spooky” issue of Stone of Madness Press.
Some postcards are memoir, others manifestos, and many are confessional, either addressed to pop culture figures and characters or written as self-revelations and larger burning or rhetorical life questions.
Read Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri’s review of Spoon Knife 6: Rest Stop in this issue of Wordgathering.
About the Author
Rachael A. Zubal-Ruggieri is the Administrative Assistant of the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach located in the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University (SU). In 2021, she graduated cum laude from the Human Development & Family Science program at Falk College, with a Disability Studies Minor. Her current research interests include Self-Advocacy, Representations of Disability in Popular Culture, and Interdisciplinary Disability Studies. Throughout 35-plus years working at SU, Rachael has dedicated her career to improving the lives of people with disabilities, including broad-based support to multiple disability rights initiatives on campus, in the CNY area, and nationally, through many grant-funded projects and opportunities and via long-term relationships with community agencies and programs. Rachael is currently Co-Advisor of the Self-Advocacy Network (formerly Self-Advocates of CNY), and previously served as a Board Member of Disabled in Action of Greater Syracuse, Inc. Rachael is also co-creator (with Diane R. Wiener) of “Cripping” the Comic Con, the first of its kind interdisciplinary and international symposium on disability and popular culture, previously held at SU. At conferences and as a guest lecturer, she has for many years presented on the X-Men comic books, popular culture, and disability rights and identities. As a Neurodivergent parent to an Autistic son, Rachael writes and presents about neurodiversity and autism parenting, seeking to debunk and disrupt traditional representations of “the autism mom.” Her poetry has been published in Wordgathering and Stone of Madness Press.