Domestic Bodies by Jennifer Ruth Jackson
Querencia Press, 2023
Reading Domestic Bodies, Jennifer Ruth Jackson’s debut collection, requires fortitude. These 75 very short poems (most less than a page long, none longer) explore living as a crip (her preferred word) in a world designed to prevent our access to shopping, government, education, events, travel, life.
Heart-wrenching poems about confronting one’s own mortality as a cancer patient and accepting death and loss of loved ones intertwine with “Pointless ruminations of a youth” (“The Pain of Starting”), “bright theories and significance” (“Astronomy in Time”), and “romance, rebranded a murder / mystery” (“Bibliophile”).
If you or a loved one face a cancer diagnosis, if you grieve the loss of a parent or relationship, if you live with disabilities, you may find solace in these pages.
Poems in Domestic Bodies will you make you smile, at least a little; frown, perhaps quite a lot. You may laugh. You may cry. But only someone without a heart can read these words without experiencing poignant emotions.
Jackson painfully evokes the barriers and scorn she encounters anytime she ventures among the abled in one of her longer poems, “The Word is ‘Disabled'”:
Yes, I am that cripple with callused
knees and suede-soft soles,with two focused eyes, though only
one can be steered straight at a time.I am that gimp you give glares to like candy
when you ram your cart into me. My fault?For existing, I pay a higher tax than you.
Stairs keep me out of businesses more than locks.I am that wheelchair, no name or gender
when you talk about the space I take(Read the second half of this poem in Domestic Bodies.)
Make no mistake, these poems leave no room for ableism, refuse to indulge in inspiration porn, allow no leniency for ill-considered contumely. They speak to the spirit of the poet, who has lived all her life with disabilities and society’s ostracism of anyone in a less than perfect body.
In reality, having an able body is a temporary human condition. For some it ends at birth. For others it lasts most of their lives. For many, Covid will halt their eudaemonia. But unless a life is cut short, all of us experience disability—temporary or permanent—at some point. Then, we discover what most ignore in their privilege: that the world was built to exclude us.
Disclosure: Jennifer did not ask me (or provide a copy) to review her book. But I consider her a friend (and much to my astonishment and appreciation, she mentions me in her acknowledgments). In addition, she has published my work on The Handy, Uncapped Pen and inspired me to create my first contrapuntal poem, “Contemplating Continuing as a Crip.”
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Jennifer Ruth Jackson is an award-winning poet and fictionist who resides in Wisconsin. She creates greeting cards, champions other disabled creatives, paints, or plays video games with her husband when not writing.
F.I. Goldhaber’s words capture people, places, and politics with a photographer’s eye and a poet’s soul. Paper, plastic, electronic, and audio magazines, books, newspapers, calendars, broadsides, and street signs display their poetry, fiction, and essays. Left Fork Press published What Color is Your Privilege?—their collection of political statements in poetic form—in September 2022.