Jessica Kim | Poem in which I talk about my disability | Poets Resist

Jessica Kim is a Korean-American poet based in California. Her works have been recognized by the National Poetry Quarterly and Pulitzer Center, and can be found in Eunoia Review, Clover & White, Minute Mag, Perhappened, and many more. She loves all things historical and sour.

Also by Jessica Kim: k(NO)w preservation Paper Town

Poets Resist
Edited by Elizabeth Ruth Deyro
July 30, 2020

Jessica Kim

Poem in which I talk about my disability

for Constance Merritt I understand why you talk about ghosts in every poem. No, I am not yet apprentice ghost & they do not uncover the entrance hall into this body. Tonight, I steal into the party dressed as Asian & disabled. Someone asks where’s your costume but there is no oration for blindness. How I can imagine skin scaffolded on a different body, eyes as mercury in orbit. How even in this one, I am unseen. Though someone is always looking for ways to tell me blind woman is less than anything. You tell me premeditation does not matter when taking & I start to question my upbringing: righteousness as sin, forgiveness as erasure, compliance as woman. I will leave this party unnoticed & smuggle into some house, eyeglass in hand. Remind me again I do not have eyes, impaled by ghostness in perpetuation. Here, let me fist maledictions into locked doors on sleepless nights. Blind girl mistaking braille as stars.