Tag: disability

Five Poems by Lindsay Ratcliffe

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Former Ninja

When I was little I scared
my parents, walking so quietly
once I spoke or touched them
they startled. Jumping slightly, saying
I’m a ninja, never making
noise, or telling me they needed
to put a bell around my neck,
like a cow, which made me giggle.

Now I can’t walk anywhere
without sound. The scratch
of my walker dragging
across the concrete, announcing me
wherever I go. I listen
to music so loud to make sure
I can’t hear myself move.

*

Ivy

My favorite nurse
leaves the room to grab
duct tape for Dad’s shoe.

We noticed the sole flopping
around walking to the hospital
that morning.

She brings back two rolls:
neon pink and cheetah print.
9-year-old me lights up

and Dad regrets his decision
while me and Ivy work:
overlapping the neon

and cheetah print to
make a beautiful overlapping,
striped pattern–

continuing our comedy when
we decide the other shoe
needs to match.

*

Thirteen Years Old

They introduce themselves
by last name:
“Dr. Kim, I’m responsible
for your bones.”
“Dr. Verkler, I’m doing
the plastics part, your skin.”
“Dr. Kiers, or Alex, your
anesthesiologist, I’ll make
sure you’re comfortable.”
Plus two more per doctor, who introduce
themselves while I think this gown
is too big. They’re here because
I’m rare and this
is a teaching hospital.

I want to teach them
how to close a door
the next morning when
a school of them—
plastics first, then ortho—
come for rounds.
Even more than I saw
yesterday in the O.R.
They crowd around the foot
of my bed, like fish
when you throw bait
off the dock. I want to
teach them to be kinder
waking me up since
I can barely manage
the pain that they
have caused. But they
don’t care, because I’m rare
and this is a teaching hospital.

*

Trading Secrets

I haven’t always used a walker.

I used to be a dancer, from first grade
to freshman year of high school.

I loved hiking and nature.
The faint rush of the water,

the subtle yet defining cracks in rocks,
or even the faint changes in the tree leaves.

I’d run ahead, so excited.
Sometimes, when I daydream, I wonder

if my veins are filled with longing
and my heart an abyss of remembered joy—

the fleeting moment of playing kickball,
choreographing dance routines in my
unfinished basement—

yet these feelings are so heavy that I hold them
inside. I want someone to come around,
know the right questions to ask and help me.

I want to go back to being a little kid,
when we could exchange lighthearted sentiments
because someone asked, quietly,
Should we trade secrets?

*

Crying at 9:17 PM

You press your spine into the cold
tile wall in the bathroom you don’t share
because you have no roommates.

You’re 21 now, why do you care
that your so-called friends aren’t wishing you
“Happy Birthday!”

You don’t know. No, yes you do.
You didn’t think you’d see today.
You’ll finish what you started,
but you’re over giving so much
to people that couldn’t care less

that you turned 21 today. Your gift
to yourself is learning
not everyone deserves all of you
and that you can get up
from the cold wall and
wipe your own tears away.
You are worth more.

*

Lindsay Ratcliffe is a poet from Flat Rock, MI. Her work has focused on her experiences with Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome. She is graduating from Albion College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and English. Her English degree has an emphasis on Creative Writing. This is her first publication.

Reorganizing by Tony Gloeggler

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Reorganizing

Even though he knows exactly
what he wants every time,
Jesse loves browsing random
aisles. If it’s our first time
in the store, clerks shadow us
as if we’re black or homeless.
Jesse always ends up stopping
by the chips and pretzels, bending
down or reaching up and touching
different packages, tracing
his fingers lightly over the bright
labels, scrunching his face
as if he’s thinking, struggling
with a life-altering decision, finally
grabbing the biggest bag of Extra
Spicy Doritos. If the clerk starts
to say something, I’ll tell Jess
it’s time to go, mention our next
planned stop, but sometimes
he’ll move his face real close
to mine, give me those widened,
pleading blue eyes and say

Re       Or       Gon       NIze

In a sing song tone. I’ll hang
my arm around his shoulder
as Jesse hums some homemade
melody and aligns the remaining
pretzels, crackers and chips
in straighter lines, a more perfect
order, propped closer to the front
of the shelf, easier for customers
to view, choose. I try to ignore
the clerk when he changes
his posture, moves his hands
and makes impatient sounds.
When he walks away, satisfied
Jesse won’t steal or damage
anything, I think about my place.

Anything left in the fridge worth
eating? Maybe time for a new
mattress, a new frying pan?
At 72, do I need to install a steel
bar to grab when stepping in,
out of the tub? Should I begin
getting rid of the CDs I’ll never
play again, and that bookcase
by the door, stocked with journals
and all my published poems?
Will they wind up left on the curb
like my shoe boxes full of baseball
cards and gold-plated trophies
of figures cast in batting stances
when I moved out of my parents’?
Probably time to find a lawyer
specializing in people like Jesse,
set up a special fund for him
that won’t affect, take away,
the SSI/Medicaid benefits
that provide the support staff
he will need as long as he lives.

*

Tony Gloeggler is a life-long resident of NYC who managed group homes for the mentally challenged for over 40 years. Poems have appeared in Rattle, New Ohio Review, Vox Populi, The Raleigh Review, Chiron Review. His collection, What Kind Of Man with NYQ Books, was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize and his new book Here On Earth came out 1/26 on NYQ Books.

Chronic by Sandra Marchetti

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Chronic

You might be called
the twisted blade, a grating
noise, the withdrawn lift.
I can’t inhale without

feeling this. It has become
a being to me, the child-
less woman who still
manages cries. A skeleton

key, the get out of jail
free card—never used.
What would happen if I
could do anything?

Without the tightened reach,
weeping seams, I might see
only sky. At fixed sights,
perhaps I’m just light

in ascent, yielding to goodbye.

*

Sandra Marchetti is the author of three full-length books of poetry, DIORAMA (Stephen F. Austin State UP, 2025); Aisle 228 (SFA UP, 2023); and Confluence (Sundress Publications, 2015) as well as four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays. Her poetry appears in Ecotone, Poet Lore, Blackbird, Southwest Review, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Essays and stories can be found in AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Pleiades, Mid-American Review, Barrelhouse, The Account, and other venues. She is Poetry Editor Emerita for River Styx Magazine. She identifies as a poet of chronic pain and disability.

I Go Back to May 1973 by Mary Keating

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I Go Back to May 1973
To the night I crashed

and see myself, a long tender lily unaware
of her grace as she’s about to get
into a Mustang to leave a party
with someone she barely knows
because her boyfriend is ignoring her.

She hasn’t learned yet how oak
doesn’t bend at 120 miles
per hour. How her spine can snap,
wilt those long green stems forever.
I want to run to her on legs I got to use

my whole life, not just until fifteen.
Tell her to turn back. Say to her boyfriend
she wants to go home, to skip
up the stairs to her bedroom,
shed her clothes, jump into the shower,
then snuggle into bed with her teddy bear
with the whisper of dreams that sleep inside—

what would our life be like
if I did go home that night and the next
day was like every other day—

I leave her as she opens the door,
allow her the time to come find me.

*

Mary Keating writes at the intersection of myth, resilience, and disability. She is the author of Recalibrating Gravity, a memoir in verse published by Woodhall Press. Her work appears in Rattle, Wordgathering, and in the One Art 2024 Haiku Anthology, with new work forthcoming in The Fiddlehead. A three time Pushcart Prize nominee, she serves as the poetry editor of ScribesMicro. Paralyzed at fifteen, she went on to become an attorney, disability advocate, and graduate of Yale Law School.