Just to see what text looks like, when there's paragraphs and poems and
an attachment...
Andy Jackson has performed at literary events and arts festivals in
Australia, India, USA and Ireland – including the Castlemaine State
Festival and the Queensland Poetry Festival, with *Each Map of Scars*, a
puppetry-poetry-film collaboration on grief, bodies and empathy. His
poems have been included in five of the last six annual *Best*
*Australian* *Poetry* anthologies, and his most recent collection,
*Music our bodies can't hold* (Hunter Publishers 2017), which consists
of portrait poems of other people with Marfan Syndrome, was recently
featured on ABC Radio National's *Earshot*. Andy has worked in call-
centres, libraries, and as a creative writing tutor at La Trobe
University and for Writers Victoria's Write-ability program, and has
almost finished a PhD in poetry and bodily otherness.
*Unhomely*
*alternating lines with Randolph Bourne's essay “The Handicapped”
(1911)*
he knows the atmosphere better than you do, so
the doors of the deformed man are always locked
though from his lounge of shadows, a surprising view
who has not all his treasures in the front window
whose facade deflects the usual questions
extraordinarily sensitive to others' first impressions
a little distant, yet very much here
inherited platitudes vanish at the first touch
of medical specialists or curious strangers
if he can stand the first shock, he will want to burrow in
to cobble together some semblance of finesse
he does not cry for the moon
only our detached aesthetics – he dreams of saying
*I solved my difficulties by evading them*, the desperate step
out of the crawlspace of wounded knowledge towards
a profound sympathy for all the ugly, queer and crotchety
this luminous splinter buried deep in the chest
a lively interest in watching how people behave
his reticent mouth opening towards
those few who by some secret sympathy will respond
their bodies, the shape of skeleton keys
one only exists, so to speak, with friends
once all those useful tools are downed
one's self-respect can begin to grow like a weed
something unwanted that won't disappear
Andy Jackson
http://amongtheregulars.com/
Attachment:
unhomely.doc
Description: MS-Word document
