Retrobulbar, at Verse Daily
Conscious Sensitivity at Zocalo Public Square
Symptoms, Hypoesthesia, and Past Forgetting at Disability Studies Quarterly
Case History: Frankenstein’s Lesions at Disability Studies Quarterly
Poems from Veil and Burn (University of Illinois Press, 2008):
The Spaces Between
In memory of R.L. Crosby, Horse-trainer 1927-1999
In the photo I’ve never seen, she stands (or leans),
bowlegged as Richard beside her, his legs
long, slim, still roundly gripped
to the sides of some young thoroughbred
visible only in the space between
his knees. Her legs, hind and front, curl
outward at the knee and hock, inward
down to fetlock and ergot joints,
the long cannon and shank bones bent
to accommodate the arc of age,
a language we can see, not speak,
an alphabet of limbs.
*
This mare’s movement forms a sentence,
unintelligible. Unable to speak last requests. What
is it that you want? I daub
her bedsores with scarlet oil; the sting
evident in flinches,
failed attempts to kick me.
She’s gone down again, scraped her sides
all night on the stall floor. I mark
each wound on the eye, legs, pelvis with red
circles of balmy correction: don’t try lying down again, or else.
*
When she casts herself down in the stall one can hear her
become the barn, shifting loudly.
Her head beats the wall. Legs, letters flying through air.
The sentence cast
down to where it wants to be, throwing
now and now into the night.
*
The next day, Richard walks me to the barn. I know
he’s been in for chemo but I say nothing: a moment
when there is too much space
for articulation of my fear, his pain.
I point out measured red spots in the dirt. How . . .?
His vocal chords spotted with lesions,
he whispers, sometimes these guys have to drag
the horses to get them into the truck, or could be
a hole between the trailer’s slats.
I look at him and desire what I cannot have:
all I love compressed, no spaces, no end,
those legs to hold a horse between them always. His gaze
answers: At some point an animal must
give in to the sentence given.
What I didn’t see until then:
the loaded truck that came to hoist the mare’s body, the barn
cats rolling in the dark pool the needle left,
the even spots of blood trailing
across the ground, ellipses.
[Mosaic Fragment]
Muted shades in cells of varying sizes suggest a numeral or pathway. Ishihara Plates Test, a book open on my lap. This to detect deficiency in the perception of color. Facets, panes of colored glass, parcels of land, as seen from a great height, a map that goes nowhere. Fragments, divisions. Museum lighting burns my eye. The nurse instructs me to trace my finger over the path, left to right. At the time of painting, Paul Klee was in his second year with scleroderma, the skin of his fingers growing taut, hard, numb. She turns the page, points. Another path. Across the painting, arrows rise and stumble direction through an approximation of center. This, the way to the citadel. Another page, so subtle I half-guess as I trace my finger. The arrows end at no destination in particular. The citadel is either impenetrable, or it is nothing. I think of the other people who have dragged their fingers across these wavy distinctions, where their paths led. I am convinced the painting’s pathway leads out of the picture.
In a Field Distractions Rise
Too much marveling at the electricity of blue
dragonflies and screens of gnats in their hover
to notice the dark ducks rising from the lake;
too filled with voice calling the dog back
from her bounds after wingflaps in flight
to comprehend the machine of those paws parting,
hear the skein of geese on their opposing air path
or the feather-water and dog-pant whir
as the ducks descend and the dog returns,
affectionate but of a thrill beyond you—;
when the egret unfolds its white-flame
wings and leaps its frame to reedy solitude
on the lake’s opposite shore, it replaces all speech
with thick tuck and space, wings collapsing to the breast.
The dog steps up to her belly in water. You know
what she's after—that white and shining figure—
because it’s your wish, too: who wouldn’t want to
embrace that bird like air, feel its bones shift to leave you?
[Gauze Fragment]
In Hollywood's golden age, the camera was often veiled by a thin piece of fabric to dissolve any harsh features or wrinkles in close-ups. The cameraman burned cigarette holes into the fabric to bring the eyes to sparkle. I have a feeling that my vision is something between the veil and the burn, or that it alternates between the two.
