– on being asked to leave a poetry workshop because I am blind
“I am not used to blind poets,”
says the teacher, his Ray-Ban
sunglasses sliding off his nose,
“they’re flying in the dark,
landing who knows where,
right in your face,
in your hair – on your stairs.”
Homer in his Red Baron jacket
hits turbulence over Troy.
Milton and Satan lock wings,
turn somersaults on the runway.
Borges nosedives into his labyrinth.
My plane wobbles, hits an airpocket.
I worry: how will I braille the sky?
Until my radar, a sleek-winged, dapper
bat, flies in. I soar over my coffee, hear
the echo of the Northern Lights in its cream.
Added: Monday, October 7, 2019 / From "Love and Kumquats: New and Selected Poems," (BrickHouse Books, 2019). Used with permission.
Kathi Wolfe is a writer and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, and other publications. She is a contributor to the groundbreaking anthologies QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology and Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Wolfe is the author of four poetry collections: Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems (Pudding House Press); The Green Light (Finishing Line Press); The Uppity Blind Girl Poems (BrickHouse Books), and Love and Kumquats: New and Selected Poems (BrickHouse Books, 2019). Wolfe has been awarded a Puffin Foundation grant and Writers grants from Vermont Studio Center. In 2008, she was a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer Fellow. She is a contributor to the acclaimed LGBTQ paper The Washington Blade.
