Disabled Poets Feature Series: Shaan Ghosh
Editor’s Note: Recently a major publisher was heavily criticized for announcing a new poetry anthology meant to elevate disabled poets, but curated with a lack of representation and offering no payment to contributing writers. Ars Poetica is no major force in the publishing industry, but as allies with intersectionally marginalized communities we wanted to offer something useful and constructive to the important dialogue. We have an open call out for disabled poets to submit poems to be published on our blog and Instagram, with a $100 honorarium for each poet. Submit your work to lamarks@arspoetica.us to be considered.
We’re thrilled to introduce you to our first poet for this series, Shaan Ghosh. I love this poem because as the reader, I get to literally walk alongside Shaan, thoughtfully considering both the inevitable animalness of our bodies, layered over with a multitude of concerns, ideas, projections, and imaginations. The scene is brief, beautiful, painful, and perfect.
-LAMARKS
World After Cane
Shaan Ghosh
Later I regretted not having looked back on my imprints in the snow,
unable to judge as I often do if they look normal enough.
Would beast of prey not check to see if their tracks had resolved?
The third leg I know, left a trace like a ball point pen.
The ball is an eye ball that sees slopes and gutters.
“You need to imagine yourself in the pinnacle of health!” - from
a man unashamed of his words since he quoted them.
He told me, a fortune cookie gave me the words to say to you.
If this was a lie it was the best kind, as the truth was equally problematic.
Lying makes mute of me, I speak even quieter than the squeaks of my mutant leg.
Riding me piggyback, see how my shame jumps on, since I have only one free arm.
Shrinking into my coat I look at nobody’s face, already convinced
Of the pity and revulsion there. I used to look only at clouds when I walked,
Or if on the bridge, up at the roof that is all wood and varnish, dreaming completely.
A wilderness fenced by a border wall turns into garden.
The winter garden is mine, and it has a window.
Behind it I sit with the garden before me and I do not disturb a squirrel or bird.
When I sit by the window, the eye on the sole of my third foot slits shut.
And still with two eyes I do not see the ground like any of you.
About the Poem:
World After Cane is about the disillusionment that comes with the tipping point from plausible deniability into disability. It was written before I had any kind of disabled community, who eventually helped me find a diagnosis. Living on a remarkably inaccessible college campus, I was surrounded by the young and able-bodied and it was the atmospheric ableism that alienated me. My cane is a part of me and I appreciate and admire it like any other feature of my body now.
About the writer:
Shaan Ghosh is a nonbinary lesbian currently at Lewis and Clark College (Portland, Oregon). He grew up in the UK and India. His writing has been featured in HarperCollins' The World That Belongs To Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia. He can be found on Instagram : @pare.shaaan