“The Malingerer Goes to the Movies”
(a Dis-Ability Coming-Out poem, for Colin Kempner, and Judith Wright)
1.
You’re sitting there,
and it’s getting harder to breathe.
It feels as if a little man, like a gnome,
has crept up the back of your seat,
and dropped a net into your head,
over your brain…
You glance at the woman sitting next to you,
and she isn’t there…
You look at the screen, and it seems unreal,
like a bad film…
Are you in a theater at all?
Are you in a room filled with water?
ARE THERE ANY PEOPLE HERE!?
2.
Show’s over, you’re out in the parking lot,
wondering how to get home…
(Scott Norman Rosenthal, Autumn ’82)
“Electroshock, Sovereignty”
for CAPA
Refuse of stars.
Hemmed by streets.
Seeking skies
untainted.
Mind dims.
Pain encircles.
Stay on your pedestals.
Drink your own lightning!
We are more than the ledgers
of our naming.
Louder than the silence of our living.
(Scott Norman Rosenthal, Spring, ‘23)
HIVES 