Disabled Poets Feature Series: Amy Gaeta
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 second poet for this series, Amy Gaeta.
This poem uses variations on the refrain “we are death planning” to great effect, so much so that by the end you almost feel that you really must start to reshape your world to welcome the final phase of life as well. Dark, contemplative, and ominous, Amy gives us fragmented peeks into a - or perhaps multiple - fragmented relationships. The specificity and universality sink in, especially upon a second reading.
-LAMARKS
Return
We’re all death planning these days
Except the “This isn’t his last Christmas” crowd
My fear wasn’t
Fear can’t catch your son’s realization:
my autonomy is his mortality
The care home broke you, anyway
Gradual brain decay is universal in this economy
So, we began death planning
You shut off your hearing aid
When she yelled
And I memorized Andy Murray stats
In case, the tv was now too far
Rumor has it you had a mean streak
But I see you skinny without motion
Sweatpants waist-tapered with yarn
You miss driving
Now we’re both backseat material
Dad says you’ll eat a club
“Reuben” you creak twice
Your Koi, does grandma know
2x a day, filter, 2x a day
Oh, and the washer
Needs a paperclip
Bocchi court needs demolition
Garden needs pollinators
Neighbor needs to mind their own fucking business
We are death planning
I let you think your collector cards are collectors
tell me your knees are just fine
act like no salting is too much
unmove in your seat
let you break me into adulthood
my first memory i am five screaming i am five swinging
my second my eye hurts, the sun is always looking at me
my third your den is Costco for gum and pocket knives
my fourth a dentist silversmiths my cavities
my fifth is why I bring that knife to cut my apples
This is death planning.
You’re my brother and my father
A memorial for certain futures
Christmas trees are cut down in July, you told me
Their corpses lined up, their pines grey.
We decorate their bodies with string tinsels, Mickey Mouse ornaments
Lay under their crooked arms, fixed by artificial light.
I am death planning.
About the writer:
Amy Gaeta is not utopian; she is a student of understanding how we survive a world that is killing us on a dying planet, a feminist disability activist and scholar, poet, punk, and PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her academic work specializes in the psychological aspects of human-technology relations under the surveillance state. In poetry, she explores mental illness, desire, and the impossibility of being human.
Links:
Website: https://aegaeta.wixsite.com/website
Instagram: @amy_gaeta
Twitter: @GaetaAmy