Poem
Fourteen
by A. Simons
Poems from the Series “Infinite Branches: Queer Speculative Disability Poetry in Conversation” — Guest Edited by Toby MacNutt. Each entry in this series includes a poem and the poet’s response to another poet in the series.
Content Warnings: poison, description of disability, discussion of medical treatment, and inherited disease
Poem Text
Fourteen
Tell you this: I am not tactical.
Never learned to play chess,
stop setting up the board. Blame
is a sickness of the living.
Me, I follow kudzu into the forest
towards grander gardens,
trees collecting green chains
in the maw of carcinogen. My journey ends in creaking teeth,
fairytale of paper cuts.
You can live with fate. She’s your neighbor. Be nice.
I thought you wanted to be an
upstanding member of the community
but here you are, putting poison in my food. Know
that death is just a different kind of hunger. Know
that wanting to kill something keeps it going longer,
gives it a legacy,
this giant’s greenhouse
tilling caustic genealogical cultivars.
I am a noble lineage
and they keep me in glass cases.
You’ll need more than herbicide to take me out.
We can put it all aside, can’t we?
For everyone’s sake. You can see I’ve been
waiting by the door for some time now. It’s cold.
You’re going to have to let me in.
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Formatting Description
Text in this poem moves across the page, conventionally dense stanzas alternating with sparse lines of wide-spaced text, creating a stacked effect reminiscent of a DNA double helix. The final pair of stanzas swaps over to the right edge of the page.
Downloadable PDF
(PDF)
Link to Poem on Interstellar Flight Press Website
(LINK)
Author’s Statement on “Fourteen”
One of the themes I am most drawn to in my work is the personification of the body, illness, and genetics. The poem “Fourteen,” which is written from the perspective of the seven-letter duplication mutation that causes my genetic disease, is one of my many pieces that focus on that theme.
Though my inspiration for the piece is grounded in my disability, to most readers, the poem will simply appear to personify a fantastical and toxic plant. I chose to use this plant metaphor for two reasons. The first is that I am trying to imagine the perspective of something that is not sentient and cannot make decisions, which is inherently difficult to conceive. I find that plant life is a fascinating proxy for that exploration. Similarly to a genetic mutation, a plant has no or very little ability to choose where it goes and what it does. It is still a living thing with the innate drive to reproduce itself, but it is difficult to ascribe moral wrongdoing to it because it has no choice in the actions it takes. The second reason for the plant metaphor is that this poem attempts to reconcile my emotions surrounding my lack of autonomy in accepting treatment. If left untreated, my disease will eventually kill me. This means that, if I want to continue living, I must accept the treatment — even if the side effects are debilitating or the monitoring is tedious. A plant, similarly, is evolutionarily driven to survive and reproduce. It has no ability to decide if it wants to live; it only tries, and it either fails or succeeds.
When I read “Vwylen in the Arboretum (Feels Like a Whore)” by Ori Driskett, I was immediately drawn to its usage of a plant metaphor as well as its sense of openness despite its vivid descriptions of the enclosed arboretum. I have tried to ground “Fourteen” in a feeling of enclosure, of being trapped and unable to run from what you know is coming. “Vwylen” does the opposite, and the autonomy and defiance expressed in the piece contrast nicely with the inevitability and fear present in “Fourteen.” Despite their similar metaphorical device, they convey very different tones and moods to the reader; it is for that reason that I chose to pair them, because I think they can spark an interesting conversation about freedom, autonomy, and choice in a queer, disabled body.
About the Author
A. Simons (they/them) is a poet, writer, and recent graduate of Bard College. They are a winner of the 2021 Sixteen Rivers Press Youth Poetry Contest and were commended for the 2023 Adroit Prize for Poetry; their work can be found in the Foundationalist, the Calendula Review, and others. Their poems are a byproduct of hematopoiesis.
About the Series “Infinite Branches: Queer Speculative Disability Poetry in Conversation” — Guest Edited by Toby MacNutt
Infinite Branches is a round-robin anthology of queer disabled poets. Poets choose their own poems in response to the poet preceding them, and each group of poets concludes with a discussion of their work in the context of each other. Facilitation for choices, statements, and discussion was done by Toby MacNutt.
Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
