Music Friday: Antony and the Johnsons

My newest music obsession is Antony and the Johnsons . Antony Hegarty is, as described by SignOnSan Diego , a "brawny-looking, transsex...

Poetry Monday: Anne Sexton

It was Anne Sexton's birthday last week. I don't know if Hugo Schwyzer was aware of that when he posted about her work, particularl...

Poetry Monday: Wordgathering, Issue 2

The second issue of the online disability poetry journal Wordgathering is up with plenty to read. Here's the start of an amazing poem b...

Poetry Monday: Eli Clare

Eli Clare has a book of poetry coming out through Homofactus Press. The Marrow's Telling: Words in Motion . Here's testimonials on ...

Poetry: Robert Pinsky

Below is a poem by Robert Pinsky, who served as U.S. Poet Laureate in the late '90s. The new Journal of Literary Disability also has an...

Poetry Monday: Jhamak Kumari Ghimire

What is the Interpretation of the New Millenium? by Jhamak Kumari Ghimire A soft light glimmers on the eve of people’s deaths The fern unfur...

Some Fred Small lyrics for Ruth

Talking Wheelchair Blues by Fred Small I went for a jog in the city air I met a woman in a wheelchair I said "I'm sorry to see you...

Poetry Monday: Mark Doty

An excerpt from "Atlantis" by Mark Doty : 4. ATLANTIS I thought your illness a kind of solvent dissolving the future a little at a...

Friday Poetry

Goodbye to Tolerance by Denise Levertov Genial poets, pink-faced earnest wits— you have given the world some choice morsels, gobbets of lang...

Poetry: Cheryl Marie Wade

I Am Not One Of The by Cheryl Marie Wade I am not one of the physically challenged- I'm a sock in the eye with gnarled fist I'm a Fr...

Poetry: Lynn Emanuel

Tourists by Lynn Emanuel In Tunis we try to discuss divorce And dying but give up to lounge With rug merchants under a plum tree. From its...

Poetry: Michael Ryan

April is National Poetry Month , you know. I'm not feeling very introspective myself, and so I surf, finding interesting verse: Letters ...

Poetry Monday: Kenny Fries

To The Poet Whose Lover Has Died Of AIDS by Kenny Fries . . . then the wasting begins and the disappearance a day at a time. -- Mark Doty T...

Poetry Monday: Every Man's Burden

The Magic Wand by Lynn Manning Quick-change artist extraordinaire, I whip out my folded cane and change from black man to blind man with a f...

A musical interlude

"Girl Anachronism" by The Dresden Dolls the lyrics by Amanda Palmer: you can tell from the scars on my arms and cracks in my hips ...

Poetry Monday: The Knife of Language

Helen Takes the Stage by Kathi Wolfe (Helen Keller starred in a vaudeville show The Bluebird of Happiness in 1924.) Here I am, playing,...

Poetry Monday: Their Sudden Tongues

Tulips by Sylvia Plath The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in I am learning...

Gas lamps as angels

Lisel Mueller's poem on Monet is part of her Pulitzer prize-winning collection, Alive Together . Years ago I saw a great presentation of...