We different humans have different abilities . . .
Zoeglossia is a literary organization seeking to pioneer a new, inclusive space for poets with disabilities. Launched in 2017, Zoeglossia is the first such organization in the poetry landscape. The idea is to provide an intersectional community open to a wide range of disability poetics, encouraging conversation and support. This link leads to a wide variety of poems that explore the experiences and consequences of illnesses and disabilities . .. and I offer a the opening portion of a sample from that collection below.
Number Twenty by Jonathan Mack
This, the story that brings me to you, is one story in twenty. In the other nineteen I am dead. In five stories I’m dead of AIDS, having suffered every possible infection and died at home, in a variety of hospitals, and in the toilet of a theater. There are seven suicides between the ages of twelve and twenty-five. There are two terrible car accidents -- one involving a drunk driver and one that is entirely my fault. In one story I live only three days and . . .
Jonathan Mack's poem is from This New Breed. Copyright © 2002 by Jonathan Mack.
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