ABIGAIL GEORGE

Flicker

After birth, what did she feel?
I think Diane Arbus just took pictures of herself
Her own alienation
Did she ever experience isolation?
Loneliness, yes, loneliness?
Did it devour her
like it devours me?
What did she hunger for?
What did she want to leave behind?
As a woman, was she ever really loved by a man?
Was the strange hypnotic beauty that she found 
in her subjects enough for her?
Why did she follow strangers home or on the 
street and make Buddhas out of them
by asking them if she could take their picture?
Did she worship art
or the sadness that held up a mirror
to the interior of her own soul?
Was she caught between a void 
and something unresolved?
Did the photographs 
give a voice to her unhappiness?
Did taking photographs make her happy?
My father wanted me to change my religion, I didn't
Would Diane Arbus still have taken photographs 
if she had changed her religion?
My father told me I was pure
Just like Diane Arbus, I suppose, 
and just like her photographs
Did the bathwater that she slipped 
into feel like the end of a spring morning?
I want to trace the red bloodstained roots in her hands
Wake up, I say 
I want to tell her,
it was all just a dream
Why did she take her own life?
Was she just sad, or was it madness?
Did she feel empty inside?
Did taking photographs stop making her feel deeply & “see” intuitively?
When everyone left me,
only grief stayed
Only the sense of longing to belong stayed with me
Just like you, I want to tell Diane Arbus
Before death came upon her, what did she feel?
Dear Diane, I am disabled
Take a polaroid from heaven
I make allowances for my disability
I become the tremors in my hands
while the child eats broccoli
The green florets on her tongue radiating innocence
I shout at my father, defeated, he walks away
Having a disability will give you no patience
I sit on my bed, and stare at my hands
Did my father give me these hands?
Well, he had a role to play
Perhaps it was God's decision
The hospitalisations,
the relapses,
the suicide ideation,
the genetic predisposition
Yes, perhaps it was God's decision
Who do I blame?
I can't blame God
After all, isn't my body a temple?
Aren't I made in the reflection of God?
God, I don't want to be alone
Who is going to look after me?
I'm a hindrance, unnecessary
Another night falls, silence descends
The night and the silence marks the end of springtime
What a journey?
The body, a stranger, 
my body, another story, 
limbs, just branches, just poetry
just the withering away
of a frail half-existence
When you're disabled, you never forget
the time period when you were able-bodied
You remember the day before
everything changed
I remember 
what my body was able to resist 
as if it was yesterday

On disability, coffee and remembrance

I want you to remember, I just wanted to belong. I want you to remember that, if you remember me at all. My heart is sore. I suppose a sore heart is a broken heart, gathered there is an accumulation of the landscape of the sun of memory. It feels as if it has always known racial burden, inequality. A sore heart has left me fragile, with the inner workings of vulnerability. It has also left me a poet. All day long it rained, I drank hot coffee and stared at the tremors in my hands. I breathed in and out, slowly, slowly, slowly, feeling lost, just lost at the prospect of losing my father and the aftermath, grief, sadness, depression, silence. Remembrance can sting. Where is the pollen? Rilke will suffice. A school is bombed, I take refuge in Rilke, in writing letters to younger poets, to would-be novelists working on their first novel, I take refuge in the inner world of the child. Poem, you are so strange, so secretive. Dearest Poem, I am strange, and so secretive too and in the end, after writing you into existence, I will become a stranger to you. We will become estranged. When I became disabled, I was, for the most part, in denial. When I was told I was crazy, I laughed. I just laughed a Bertha Mason laugh. After the diagnosis, I never swam anymore. I avoided beaches, the sea, swimming pools, rock pools like the plague. The only expanse of water I explored were my tears. Disability doesn't make you brave, it makes you aware of four things very quickly. That you are different, that you will never be the same again. It makes you aware of the figurations of alienation & isolation. Even in the silences, I still have the memory of the sea, swimming with my father as a child. I still have the memory of being able-bodied, making a speech at my high school, being on stage in a play, the lead role, and receiving a standing ovation for both. It's still raining, but my coffee is cold. I hold my hands to my face but that action doesn't stop my tears. They taste salty and bitter. Yes, on the bad days being disabled makes me bitter. On the good days I write poetry, sad poems of remembrance. What is the past? Memory, memory. Poetry is just a vehicle to get me to all the tomorrows of my future, and, to give someone, who is lost and frightened, hope. In real life now, I am fragile, yes, I am still fragile. Please, please handle me with care, the vessel of this body, my story, even the onslaught of the grief of my inner world.