Diseased

by Ana Garza

I see the defective human bodies of the earth,

The blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics,

The pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth,

        –Walt Whitman (“Salut au Mond” 1889-1892)

 

When Whitman saw,

probably I was

dozing in a hand-planed chair, listening

to my grown children and my toddling grandchildren

speaking kindnesses in the parlor of some tucked away house,

 

or maybe I was

suckling my mother’s milk or cooing

in my cradle, too caught up in my fingers, the silk

side rails and the wool blanket I rubbed

against my face,

 

or I could have been

sewing that afternoon in the window

of a scrubbed house with lavendered women

whose comfort was that Jesus healed

people like me with mud from spit,

 

or possibly I wasn’t

caught up in the poet’s multitudes but set, like stone,

along the bank–my palm turned up,

a bowl, a bell, my call

for alms above his song–or more

 

likely, I just slept

on a cot, fevered in tifus, warming

my fingers between my thighs, until men or women versed

in charity smudged

rags across my hands and face

to raise me

 

for a meal. More likely, this

is where I was: a school

with broom handles to be sanded

for sale, broken

walls, drafts, bloated

floorboards, loose straw, unfed minds

and idle bodies for the babbling

lookers-on to notice

how the sloppy fingers of the blind stretch,

reaching for a voice.

 

Ana Garza wrote this poem while taking a graduate course on Walt Whitman, a poet known for his amazing inclusiveness. When she came across the line quoted in the epigraph, she noticed that blind people, like herself, weren’t really included.  Ana has an M. F. A. from California State University, Fresno. forty-four of her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, most recently in A handful of Stones, The New Verse News and The Mom Egg.

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The Copper Bowl

by Mani G. Iyer

If it weren’t for the stumps

of his hands,

occasionally swatting those

irritable flies, and

the copper bowl

in the center

of his squatted presence,

you could easily mistake him, for

a heap of dead human flesh. 

The creased bowl was always filled

with the grace of

human beings, and

he acknowledged them

with a twitch of a smile,

perhaps painful,

due to unrelenting nerves, and

his hands, that failed to meet,

raised in gratitude. 

You could never see his legs

beyond the cracked bowl, for

he had none, and

you wondered how

he conducted life’s daily rituals

on a roller board, and

appear like clockwork

for years, at the same

latitude and longitude. 

Nobody knows what became of him

when his abode of the street corner

near a temple,

was disinfected, and

there was no sign

of his defiance, nor

his  life-sustaining bowl, and

the once stubborn flies

left, no tombstone. 

Mani G. Iyer was born and raised in Bombay, India and has lived in the United States since 1985.  He is deaf-blind due to Usher Syndrome Type 2.  He became deaf by the age of 4, night-blind by the age of 12, and now has very little usable vision.  Writing poetry has been a creative outlet for him since the age of 18.

(Every so often, I like to re-post one of my favorite pieces submitted to Vision Through Words.  We have been lucky to have so many talented writers contribute t the blog.  Thank you!)

Spring

by Rox’E Homstad

Spring time in New Orleans. Fresh strawberries and that Strawberry

Abita beer I love so much. Flowers and shrubs blooming everywhere.

Those nasty stinging caterpillars dropping out of nowhere to leave you

with a souvenir of their passing which will last for days. This time

of year is the same time six years ago when I made my way out of exile

in Memphis, TN. back home after the failure of the federal levees.

There is a section of “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran which sums up my

leaving of Memphis well.

 

“Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long

were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his

aloneness without regret?

Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets,

and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among

these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an

ache.

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with

my own hands.”

 

On the 26th of March, I packed my worldly goods into a U-Haul and

drove back home. I was coming home to much welcome, but also to much

work.

 

I remember getting out of the car once we had arrived at my new

temporary home. The city still had that smell. It’s an undefinable

smell, mixed of equal parts decay, death, and desolation. And the

mold… we must not forget the mold.

 

That night, friends had come to help us move our things. After

unloading the truck, we trooped over to Franky and Johnny’s for some

soul food.

 

Those first few weeks were a blur. I saw clients every day with

stories of being pulled from rooftops, watching their children die,

and floating on kitchen appliances in filthy waters. I listened. I

helped where I could.

 

Things started getting quieter and quieter in my world. I couldn’t

hear the phone. I couldn’t hear my clients or coworkers. In six weeks

my hearing was gone, and I didn’t know what I would do. I was in a

city with very limited medical services. The wait to see an

audiologist is long. He is so shocked by the sudden loss, and he fears

I may have some obscure form of inner ear cancer.

 

I wait some more, finally get an MRI, and wait even longer only to find

out that I do not have obscure and deadly ear tumors. But I’m still

deaf, and navigating a city full of crime and debris which would

easily fall into the category of biohazardous totally deaf and almost

totally blind. I was more alone and afraid than I can ever remember

being.

 

The doctors tell me that it’s the mold in the city which has caused my

inner ear disease to flair up and take my hearing. It’s like a bad

country-western song. “Katrina done took my house and my hearing and

my city.” The only thing missing is a part about trains and betrayed

love.

 

People ask me if I regret coming back. If I knew what would happen to

me, would I have gone back? And my answer will always be hell yes!

Because I would rather be deaf in New Orleans than hearing and live

anywhere else.

The New Orleans native and author Poppy Z. Brite once said:

“If you belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into

yourself, you don’t desert it just because it can kill you.”

 

I have known from the very moment I first arrived here. On that gray

and rainy day nine years ago. I knew that this is where I wanted to

live for the rest of my life. I want to work here, and be in love

here, and train dogs here. When I am old, I want to sit on my porch

here, and drink whisky in my lemonade on muggy July afternoons. And I

want to die here, and I want this place to be better for me having

been a part of it. I am certainly better for it being a part of me.

 

This whole time, when I struggled every day for simple communication,

I took strength from my clients. They would tell me how I gave them

hope for the future. But what they would never know is that really, it

was the other way around.

 

And so it’s spring again– a time which makes me think about great

love, and great inspiration. It makes me think of renewal and

redemption and hope.

 

And I pass one more season under a sky of vibrant blue, sitting on my

porch drinking Strawberry Abita beer and knowing that I am truly

blessed.

 

Rox’E Homstad says she lives in a rundown house in New Orleans, sharing my life with her husband and their four dogs– all of whom are retired or working assistance dogs.  By day she is a braille and activities of daily living instructor for blind and deaf-blind adults.  She owns a small business doing dog training and herbal consultations for pets.  She loves to cook, read, and is trying to teach herself to grow plants.  Her website is http://www.pawpowercreations.com.

Pearl in Bubble Wrap

by Paul Hostovsky

She’s pretty deaf and pretty blind and pretty

in an octogenarian sort of way, her hair completely

white, and pulled back tight from her high smooth forehead.

If staring at the blind is rude, I must be downright

scurrilous. Scurrilous piety, this kneeling down in front of

her wheelchair, to tie her shoelace which has come untied,

then sitting back down across from her to stare

some more. Snap, snap, snap, goes the bubble wrap

in her mottled fist, her fingers thirsting after the next

and the next explosion under thumb. I can see on her face

how sensual, how satisfying this sensation is for her

whose sensations are mostly tactile now that she’s pretty

deaf and pretty blind and pretty alone here at the nursing home

where they can’t communicate with her. So they give her

the bubble wrap, lots of it, to keep her busy, happy, maybe even

joyful, bursting joy’s grape over and over, getting her

eighty-year-old ya-ya’s out in her wheelchair parked

in front of my eyes. And I can’t help wondering

how much bubble wrap she’s gone through in the days

and weeks and months she’s been here, how many miles of it

she’s consumed. She’s probably been to the moon and back

on her fingertips, dancing along the backs of these plastic

turtles, leaping across these disappearing stones, these rivers

of bubble wrap, oceans of bubble wrap. “Pearl!” I shout

into her good ear, the one with the cochlear implant. “I have

to get going now!” She looks up vaguely, pauses briefly from

the pursuit of more pleasure in her lap. I give her a kiss

and head for the elevator. Once inside, I push the Lobby button

several times before it lights up. Then I worry the Braille beside it

with my index finger, all the long way down to the street.

 

Paul Hostovsky is a sighted Braille instructor in Boston. He is also the author of three books of poetry, Bending the Notes (2008), Dear Truth (2009), and A Little in Love a Lot (2011). His poems have won a Pushcart Prize and been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and Best of the Net 2008 and 2009. To read more of his work, visit his website at www.paulhostovsky.com .

Quotation of the Week

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Mark Twain quotes (American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer. 1835–1910  (Quote taken from http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/blind/)

Creative Person of the Week

Helen Keller – (1880 – 1968) – Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deaf/blind person to graduate from college. She was not born blind and deaf; it was not until nineteen months of age that she came down with an illness described by doctors as “an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain”, which could have possibly been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities amid numerous other causes.

Read more: http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/famous-blind.shtml#ixzz1VCgyH4J1

The Copper Bowl

by Mani G. Iyer

If it weren’t for the stumps

of his hands,

occasionally swatting those

irritable flies, and

the copper bowl

in the center

of his squatted presence,

you could easily mistake him, for

a heap of dead human flesh. 

The creased bowl was always filled

with the grace of

humane beings, and

he acknowledged them

with a twitch of a smile,

perhaps painful,

due to unrelenting nerves, and

his hands, that failed to meet,

raised in gratitude. 

You could never see his legs

beyond the cracked bowl, for

he had none, and

you wondered how

he conducted life’s daily rituals

on a roller board, and

appear like clockwork

for years, at the same

latitude and longitude. 

Nobody knows what became of him

when his abode of the street corner

near a temple,

was disinfected, and

there was no sign

of his defiance, nor

his  life-sustaining bowl, and

the once stubborn flies

left, no tombstone. 

 Mani G. Iyer was born and raised in Bombay, India and has lived in the United States since 1985.  He is deaf-blind due to Usher Syndrome Type 2.  He became deaf by the age of 4, night-blind by the age of 12, and now has very little usable vision.  He has written poetry since the age of 18.