What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

painandcats:

erinschick:

wanderingpuck:

erinschick:

A new poem about identity and facework and the misconception that there is privilege in being visibly disabled. Performed at the Portland Poetry Grand Slam. Filmed by SlamFind. 

can someone please do a transcript for this? the auto captions are okay but I think some things are missing and I can’t get them and I want to.

Transcript:

“after Crystal Valentine

I used to be scared to call myself disabled
because I didn’t look the part
but the disability is my performance of it
my performance is always the loudest thing in the room
even when I am silent

I show up with a wheelchair and an honest body
and I do not need to say
I am disabled
you already believe it

This is visibility privilege

I bring the wheelchair to a benefits interview,
when it’s more convincing to wear my impairments
than explain a diagnosis

The midnight hospital trips
when the pain has taken everything I have
I bring the black cane, that folds, that says
I am a serious patient, the illness is so much
a part of me I accessorize with it

But the next morning, picking up prescriptions
in the store where I used to work,
I take the hospital cane even though it is heavier
I say I am injured, not ill
all this I call temporary

This is passing privilege

A stranger asks if I have gotten better when I stand onstage unassisted
in the only 2 hours all week I will leave my bed

And this is erasure

Just yesterday, it seems
I was whole person
with a job and a life and
now everything is disappearing

The first time my arm was too weak
to lift a full cup from the bedside table and it spilled,
I just sat there, coffe soaking the sheets
tears falling down a face I couldn’t feel

A hospital full of doctors, and not one can tell me
when I will die, just that it will be too soon
anything I hold could be dropped in an instant

I’m not startled anymore by the sound
of porcelain shattered
cleaning up another murdered dish
I remark to the empty apartment
how strange it is to watch these hands that once
built houses now break everything they touch

Last week a new doctor said
I read your chart, you’re a climber?
so am I
I said, I used to be
and now this silence is all that’s shared between us

And this is cripple privilege
the only power I have left
how easily I can make you pity me”

[video description: Erin Schick (pale, thin, short/buzzed auburn or brown hair, no glasses) is standing in front of a microphone on a dark stage. they’re wearing a dark green or gray shirt. the video is filmed from the side.]

(via jackironsides)

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