Every Place on the Map Is Disabled

Camisha L. Jones (she/her) is the author of the poetry chapbook Flare. Her poems are published in Poets.org, The Deaf Poets Society, The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database at Split This Rock, Typo, and elsewhere. She is a 2022 Disability Futures Fellow, a multidisciplinary fellowship award supported by United States Artists, the Ford Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him) is an assistant professor of English at Kenyon College. He has been published widely in venues of public scholarship and poetry, and his work includes three chapbooks, The Bone Setter, Paring, and Vagaries, and a full-length collection, What’s Left Is Tender.Michael Northen (he/him) was the founder and editor of Wordgathering from 2007 to 2019. He was an editor of the anthologies Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability and The Right Way to Be Naked and Crippled. For twelve years Northen facilitated the Inglis House Poetry Workshop for Disabled writers in Philadelphia.Naomi Ortiz (they/she) is the author of Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice and Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice. A 2022 Disability Futures Fellow, their widely published poetry, writing, and visual art focuses on self-care, disability justice, and climate action in the Arizona U.S./Mexico borderlands.

“This vital gathering of creative and critical works returns to the essential questions, practices, and affirmations that were initiated with Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. With this anthology the circle is widened, bringing a stunning array of intersectional writing that celebrates the essential stories from the community about love, grief, beauty, anger, and survival while also advocating for what is just and what is necessary. The works within challenge expectation and rejoice in possibility. The work of the creators and makers collected in this volume is absolutely essential in these times.” —Oliver de la Paz, author of The Diaspora Sonnets“Expansive, full of beauty and surprises. The profound impact which Disability Poetics has on literature is clear throughout this anthology, which continues and diversifies the work of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability.” —Kenny Fries, award-winning author of In the Province of the Gods and curator of the Disability Poetics video series “Most of us have long avoided the truth so plainly and beautifully shared in the essays and poems inside Every Place on the Map is Disabled. Put simply, most of us will one day be disabled. To avoid this truth is to forfeit the power, intimacy, fear, and fortitude so expertly rendered by these authors. If every place on the the map is indeed disabled, I offer a deep bow to the complex and divine cartography of this book.” —Sonya Renee Taylor, author of The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love

• Foreword: A New Possible Sheila BlackIntroduction: A History and Q&AMichael Northen, Camisha L. Jones, Travis Chi Wing Lau, Naomi Ortiz1. Intimacies and Interdependence Naomi OrtizEssay: To Reclaim PowerBenefactionY2K Philadelphia (That time we met)Shelter Is a Privilege (one & two)To the Non-Disabled White Grrrl with the Frida Kahlo Altar in the Living Room Liv MammoneEssay: Art Object, TalismanSurgery PsalmReinventing the ScaleA Crip IsLeah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaEssay: Why We Do This Thing Called Disability Justice WritingI know crips live hereBad roadAdaptive deviceEkiwah Adler-BelendezEssay: On Writing "I Bargained For This Wheelchair"The Speed of Sound: Skydiving from one life to another La velocidad del sonido: Saltando de una vida a otra (trans. Kenia Cano)Falling into TruthEn Verdad Caer (trans. Kenia Cano)Jay BesemerEssay: PERMEABLEelevenWhere the Loved Ones GoViktoria ValenzuelaEssay: My Fibromyalgia, Like My Poetry, Is a Response to TraumaThe Scent of a BattleThank You to the DustNightly NewsOsimiri SprowalEssay: A QueerCrip Reflection on Intimacy and Boundary BuildingHearth: A QueerCrip Break-up ManifestoMolly McCully Brown and Susannah NevisonEssay: A Place That's OursDear M—Dear S—Dear M—Dear S—Dear M—Dear S— Rachel ScogginsEssay: The Magic Consortium of Poetic Disabled LivesGuide to Magic HeliumVivid DreamsDaniel SlumanEssay: Suspended Disability and the importance of disability poetrymy love is sponsored by the warmth of opiates& this is love 2. Language Shahd AlshammariEssay: Navigating a Hijacked Body with Two TonguesPublic DisgraceMeaninglessnessDavid James "DJ" SavareseEssay: Squawking Joy and MayhemThe Librarian in the TreesSwoonTonguetorrin a. greathouseEssay: Poems with Bodies Like MineWeedsAbecedarian Requiring Further Examination Before a Diagnosis Can Be DeterminedThat's So LameEssay Fragment: Economic Model of DisabilityJessica StokesEssay: all the floors I know too well from trying not to trip are one thick memoryNew ShoesGaia ThomasEssay: Hold It against meVVIIlya KaminskyEssay: Reading Celan in UkraineThat Map of Bone and Open ValvesIn a Time of PeaceConstance MerrittEssay: Some Notes on a (Dis)/Embodied PoeticsJay-Walkin BluesRevelation BluesLess Than Greater Than Blues 3. Ableism Aurora Levins-MoralesEssay: The Why and the How: Disability Justice PoeticsPoem for the BedriddenAsher YatzarRoxanna BennettEssay: You Were Born, Ergo, I Love You"What do you do for a living?""Wherever You Go, There You Are"Meg DayEssay: T-I-M-B-E-RDeaf Erasure of the Gospel According to the TSA Agent at Atlanta InternationalElegy in Translation10am Is When You Come to MeStephen LightbownEssay: Searching for DignityAfter the Check InGroundedLateef McLeodEssay: How Poetry Can Evoke Empathy and MeaningAbsence of routineSo MuchJill KhouryEssay: Unimagined PossibilitiesCranial Nerve IIAN OBJECT APPROACHES THE I[rotary nystagmus]Kay Ulanday Barrett Essay: We Will Buoy Each OtherSick 4 SickI use the word DisabledIn which your white doctor informs you that he was in the Navy & based in the Philippinesconsider the gender spectrumRaymond AntrobusEssay: Is There a Right Way to Act Deaf [Captioned]Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel HarrisThe Mechanism of SpeechThe Acceptance 4 Medicalization Stephanie HeitEssay: Disability as a Creative PracticeTreatment RoomRecovery BayDear Brain,Emilia NielsenEssay: A Note on the Poetry and Poetics of Dissonant DisabilitiesTremorsEmotional LabilityPolyphagiaHypertensiveTravis Chi Wing LauEssay: The Crip Poetics of PainTreatmentOn the Anniversary of an X-RayBrain FogPithyKelly DavioEssay: A Little Pocket for RageI May Appear DrunkHe Died after a Long IllnessEtymological NoteCamisha L. JonesEssay: Poetry, Self-Advocacy, and SurvivalAccommodationMénière's FlareIn/AbilityMy Hearing Loss Interrogates the WorldJesse Rice-EvansEssay: I Want to Feel Like HomePillsAll I'm looking for is a ceremony 5. Journeys and Becomings Andy JacksonEssay: Broken Lines and BelongingQuasimodoDouble HelixRigoberto GonzálezEssay: The Man with the CaneTo the Man Who Walks with a CaneThe Trees Keep Weeping Long after the Rain Has EndedCath NicholsEssay: It's a Bit Like ThisTender spotsEli ClareEssay: Turning Toward Each OtherConfluenceA Survivor's WailL. Lamar WilsonEssay: "I Wouldn't Help It Even If I Could'I Can't Help ItLegion: Human Immunodeficiency VirusEmily K. MichaelEssay: The Blood and Candor of CraftFaithAmong the BlindDeficienciesNatalie E. IllumEssay: If you are Disabled, and there is an [INSERT], you [???].What the brain hemorrhage saysIf you are Disabled and there is a bomb cyclone, youLiz WhiteacreEssay: Playing Poetic Telephone to Explore Pain in PoemsPain PoutsThe Stoic's UniverseKobus MoolmanEssay: The Poetics of Falling: an overviewThe ShoulderThree Views of a Pair of Orthopedic BootsIn the BathroomAcknowledgementsContributors