from Trauma Head
pack animal: go where expected crave curves, to burrow or nest but recognize cold and flat and thick and numb am meant to be displayed illness is platform numb and cold and still and stiff and this bed is built of violence stiff and cold and thin and mute brisk hands start a line depart, return, withdraw, arrive bring a blanket thin as human skin give body / over / to whomever wants to touch it here, have it, I’ll unfold miles of myself into capable hands unspool veins and empty all my arteries within the pages of the chart unfold / become lotus in heat flutter and bloom on this bed opening ( dilating ( ( read me how you like, me / an instrument prized for pliability, unobstructionist and unmysterious I’ll make it easy pull shirt off shoulder push palms into your capable hands wait for you to decide if I am as strong as I appear
Who?
What?
In 2012, poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner precipitously lost feeling in, and use of, her left side. The mini-stroke passed quickly but was symptomatic of something larger: a tear in the lining of an artery known as the tunica intima. This long-poem memoir tracks the author's experiences with un/wellness and un/re-familiarity with herself. Shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, Trauma Head disturbs and disorders language and syntax to reconcile appearance with experience.
When?
Arrives May 18, 2018.
Where?
Purchase from the All Lit Up website or at your local bookstore. $18.
How?
Losing your left side.
The copyrights of all poems included in the series remain with their authors, and are reprinted with the permission of the publishers.
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