Natalie E. Illum…   is a poet, performer and disability activist. Bring her stumbling to your city.

by Natalie E. Illum

Disabled Ars Poetica

Writing a poem is

building a skyscraper; words
that need to load bare, to scale.

The poem always has windows,
but also a bunker, a shelter-in-place, a gas mask.
Hopefully, a cafeteria. Maybe I’ll find a message

in the oldest office of my memory, discover something
about my body in the elevator shaft.  Maybe not.

When I write, I choose one line to be the strongest beam.
The others are all scaffolding; the punctuation marks
become super glue and we’ll say anything to keep

that one image from plummet.
That scaffolding makes it harder
to jump, but it’s not impossible.
Poetry is

both janitor and CEO; the analyst
and the assistant, who is a secret
polyglot,

who often won’t tell you how to translate
what you found carved into the original
blueprint of what you’ve been
trying to say.  Which is:

my father…