Short Stories & Essays in Breath & Shadow Disability Literary Journal

The Fall 2014 edition of Breath & Shadow, Ability Maine's journal of disability literature is out! It features short fiction by Stacye Cline-Robinson and Lela Marie De La Garza.

There's also a delicious three-part essay on experiences relating to being a low-vision musician and singer by Emily K. Michael. Here's an excerpt from the third section of "Sight and Singing":

One year ago, I reclaimed my place on the risers next to 60 singing women. I had been absent from this chorus for six years, singing where I could - in college chorales, with friends, at karaoke nights on campus, and, once, with a talented jazz combo in St. Augustine. 

Now that I'm back with my chorus, I have the chance to improve many aspects of my singing technique, and my favorite methods incorporate tactile elements. During rehearsal, one director asks us to turn to the left and place our hands on the belly of the singer in front of us. We should feel movement in the singer's abdomen if she is breathing correctly. One hand rests gently against the singer's ribcage while the other presses her belly - and, sure enough, her breathing pushes both hands forward. Our exercises include a plethora of breathing sounds, routines of sh sh, hee hee, ff ff, ts ts. Hands on each other’s bellies and ribs, we complete the routines with fierce concentration - until a singer murmurs, "Get ready, the baby's coming!"

Read the read of Emily K. Michael's essay, as well as the two short stories, at Breath & Shadow.

New Disability-Inspired Poetry at Breath & Shadow!

Breath & Shadow, the disability literary journal produced by Ability Maine, has its Fall 2014 issue out now!

This edition features poetry by Jenna-Nichole Conrad, Mark Cornell, Sergio Ortiz, and Raud Kennedy.

Here's an excerpt from "Define Me," a poem by Jenna-Nichole Conrad to whet your appetite:

...And here is the poet, pen-stained

And naked in her thoughts. She has planted
A garden in her armchair;
It is time to harvest

To read her other poem, and the other poems published this month, please visit Breath & Shadow!

New edition of Breath & Shadow online! Poetry, fiction, essays!

Below is the post that went out to Breath & Shadow subscribers from Chris Kuell, editor of Breath & Shadow, the literary journal of Ability Maine. If you, too, would like to subscribe (for free!), please drop us a line at breathandshadow@gmail.com.

Breath and Shadow
Volume 11, Number 2
Spring 2014

April is National Poetry Month, and in this issue we feature excellent pieces from Abigail Astor, Allegra Keys, Lori-Ann Tessier and Bruce Ario. There is also compelling fiction by Raymond Luczak, Susan M. Silver and Day Al-Mohamed. Essays by Michael Lockwood and Patti Rutka round out this exciting issue. So go hug a poet, and happy reading.

As part of a new initiative, poets are invited to submit audio/video clips of their performance pieces (in addition to the text) if they wish. It's not mandatory, but we hope that adding this new dimension will help open up the world of poetry to more of our readers. Visit our guidelines page for details. Our editors hope you enjoy this issue of Breath and Shadow. Please recommend us to your friends and let us know what you think.

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To read our Spring (or past issues) please visit: www.abilitymaine.org/breath

Breath and Shadow Staff:

Chris Kuell, Editor in Chief

Assistant Editors: Abby Astor, Dorothy Baker, Anne Chiapetta, Linda Cronin, Tricia Owsley and Suzanne Westhaver

Breath & Shadow is a collaborative effort of AbilityMaine, Resourcesfor Organizing and Social Change (ROSC), and our many valuable readers and contributors. Please consider donating to Breath and Shadow. We need your support to achieve our mission, and your gift is tax deductible. You can learn more by visiting: http://www.abilitymaine.org/breath/fund.html

Poetry in Fall 2013 Breath & Shadow Journal of Disability Literature & Culture

The current issue of Breath & Shadow (Volume 10, Number 4) blows opens with the "Twister," by high school student Abby Ridderhoff. The poem takes on the challenges of mental illness in

a pristine little girl
[which] ripped the daisies
from her hair

The next poetic offerings are three pieces by Akua Lezli Hope -- "Routine," "Dentist Visit," and "I fly into your indifference." The villanelle, "Routine," uses the form to good effect as the hypnotic repetition of the first and third line of the opening stanza carries the reader into the narrator's musings on the slowing of life with a new disability:

I sleep to wake and take my waking slow
I fear my fate in what is no longer there
I get nowhere that I used to go

C.R. Reardon makes his debut in Breath & Shadow with "No Lie," a hip-hop flavored poem primed with rhymes. The piece takes on sex, sexism, and pity -- leavened by humor and playfulness with lines like these:

Go ahead, show off your lexicon
With words like “lexicon”.  Tell her
How King Kong ain’t got shit on you; that will
Make her weepy, all touchy-feely.  Take her
To your room, go boom boom or do what you do,
And say tutaloo.  

Maine resident Carol Mackey contributes two poems to the current issue of Breath & Shadow. "Differences" and "Life's Friends," the latter using the metaphor of walking in another's shoes to connect with the reader:

You have walked in my shoes,the festering blister,the too tight arch....
The birds have no voices,dogs do not bark.

Anchoring the poetry in this edition of the literary journal is Cody Vander Clute's "Choosing Between the Long Jump and the Short Drop." A fast-paced sensual poem, rich with sensory detail, each stanza reveals a surprise as the narrator decides whether to take a lover home that night:

does he want to knowifnot having the signs fortalking with me will stopthe mystical unionof being wet and sticky

Read the diverse and delicious poems in the current edition of Breath & Shadow!

Audio & Slam Poetry comes to Breath & Shadow, Disability Literary Journal

The latest issue of Breath & Shadow, the journal of disability culture and literature published by Ability Maine, is up now. Editor Chris Kuell included this note to subscribers of the journal:

April is National Poetry Month, and as part of the celebration Breath & Shadow is launching a new initiative. Beginning now, poets are invited to submit audio/video clips of their performance pieces (in addition to the text) if they wish. It’s not mandatory, but we hope that adding this new dimension will help open up the world of poetry to more of our readers. Visit our guidelines page for details.

With the increasing popularity of poetry performances on youtube or other media, and with slam poetry continuing to hold an important place in the poetry world, Breath & Shadow hopes this openness to accessible multimedia approaches to poetry will be exciting to readers and poets alike.

And just to kick things off, here are a couple of poetry performances from youtube:

[If you're reading this post in an email, watch these two videos from Special Poetry Slam here: Life in Drag and Ice Skating.]

Short Stories and Essays in Breath & Shadow Vol. 10 No. 2

Alex Duvall's essay, "Tourette," mixes together the history of the diagnosis and his own personal history with OCD and  Tourette. He speaks to his disability as if addressing a person or a demon,  and uses a poetic style including metaphor and simile. Read the essay, "Tourette."

W.R. Hilary's "One More Needle in the Haystack" is a piece of short-short fiction that totally engaged me with its hypnotic language -- short, concise bursts of repeated words, sounds, and themes that have a different flavor every time they land.

Why are you always in the hallway, standing in that blue plaid coat with your face pressed against the dirty glass of the door so that they can all see you while the teacher speaks? Throw that damn coat away and wear the one she gave you. I don’t care that it smells like her. Wear it for your own sake.

Read "One More Needle in the Haystack."

Misti Shupe's memoir, "My Hair Dresser Stole my Mojo," tells the story of how a single haircut changed the author's life. While many children and adults with disabilities are abused because they're perceived as easier victims by their perpetrators, Shupe's diabetes actually protected her from further abuse. However, the lessons of putting on a perfect facade from her childhood live on in the adult Shupe's life until a rash decision to cut off her hair brings her face-to-face with who and what she really wants to be, a thrilling transformation to witness for Shupe's family, her readers, and Shupe, herself. Read "My Hair Dresser Stole my Mojo."

In "The Jungle," William Ward's short short, the narrator has a simple disagreement in the checkout line at the store that goes very wrong.

“This is not the jungle,” I reminded myself. “Not the jungle.”

So I did what the counselor taught me. I folded my hands palm to palm at my chest, bowed slightly, and said “Namaste.” But he must have caught my mental subtext that said, “You are one sorry asshole.”

Read "The Jungle."

Robert Kingett's essay, "Into a Memory," is a lovely piece of memoir, rich in sensory detail. Kingett reveals how hearing William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" takes him back into his childhood and how this poem offered him comfort and escape while the chaos of domestic violence raged around him:

After listening to the first line, I was transported to a memory that I did not even know I had: It is late at night, and I am six. I remember feeling the Braille calendar poised in my lap, my finger tracing the soft indentations of the moons among the days. A sound erupts from the living room and I look up, my ears picking up every shift of the air just a few rooms from me.

Read "Into a Memory."

The Spring Issue of Breath & Shadow, the Disability Literary Journal, Is Up!

This is 10th year of publication for Breath & Shadow and this spring issue shows it's still going strong, with poetry, essays, and fiction by diverse writers with disabilities. It features poetry by Ani Keaten, Jennifer Ruth Jackson, Sergio Ortiz, and Jordan Jamison, nonfiction by A.K. Duvall, Misti Shupe, and Robert Kingett, and fiction by W.R. Hilary and William Ward.

Read the Spring 2013 issue of Breath & Shadow!

Breath & Shadow essay ~ Persistent Demons of War: A Story of Prolonged PTSD

by Sharon Wachsler

The Fall 2012 issue of Breath & Shadow, Ability Maine's journal of disability literature and culture, is up now.

This edition's essay is a gripping and heartrending story by Arthur W. Schade, "The Persistent Demons of War: A Personal Story of Prolonged PTSD." Schade reveals that it took him three years to write this essay, and it was time well spent. While reading, I sometimes found myself leaning into my computer screen, my teeth clenched, while other times tears sprung into my eyes or a laugh burst from me.

Schade begins his story as an eighteen-year-old entering the Marines and being swept up in the chaos and confusion of enlistment and training: noise, strange surroundings, and, well, naked male butts!

We went through lines of examinations and stood around for hours, recognizing one another's bare asses before we could learn each other’s names. We did not realize so many of us would remain together in squads and fire teams, building deep-seeded bonds of friendships along our journey. Our initial ‘shock’ indoctrination began immediately at Parris Island; intimidating drill Instructors scrambled our disoriented butts off the bus, organized us into a semblance of a formation, and herded us to the barracks for a night of hell.  Following what we thought would be sleep (but in actuality was a nap), we awoke in awe to explosive clamor as the DIs banged on tin garbage can lids next to our bunks, yelling “get up you maggots.” Even the largest recruits trembled. Flooded with anxiety and apprehension, already we were second-guessing our decision to enlist.

Everything changes from literally the moment that Schade stands on Vietnamese soil, revealing a shocking mishap that I had never even known was a danger of war. He describes how just fourteen months in 1966 and 1967 changed him forever and left him feeling out of place among his nineteen-year-old peers when he returned the United States. Yet, for decades he managed to keep his "demons" to himself -- the nightmares, anxieties, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) -- and "pass," explaining how and why it was so important to him to cope the way he did. Until the option to keep everything under wraps was yanked away by a new war:

When the first Gulf War began in 1990, I sensed the demons bursting from within. No matter how hard I tried to avoid them, I saw vivid images and news coverage of every aspect of the war. The bodies and faces in the media were not strangers anymore. Instead, they were my brothers from a much older and forgotten war. I sought refuge with the Veteran’s Administration and began attending group therapy.

Connecting with fellow vets and PTSD survivors took Schade on a new journey he shares with Breath & Shadow readers. I am moved and grateful for having read his story. I learned a great deal from being able to learn from what Schade witnessed, heard, felt, and did before, during, and after his tour in Vietnam and his time now as a warrior in supporting veterans with PTSD.

Read Arthur W. Schade's essay at Breath & Shadow here.

Breath & Shadow Editor, Chris Kuell, Interviewed in Wordgathering

Chris Kuell, the editor of Breath & Shadow literary journal, was interviewed in this month's issue of Wordgathering. Read the interview here!

Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry, as its name suggests, was launched as a poetry journal with a focus on disability. However, as it's established itself -- now in its sixth year -- the journal has branched out to include disability-related reviews, essays, visual art, and fiction, too.

This interview is a terrific behind-the-scenes look of what goes on at Breath & Shadow and is a must read for writers who are interested in submitting their work to the publication. Chris discusses favorite writers and pieces from past editions of Breath & Shadow, upcoming work in the journal, his own writing background and projects, and the history, mission, and goings-on at Breath & Shadow.

Chris keeps things interesting with his wit and political perspective, too, as this excerpt shows:

Wordgathering: What role do you feel a magazine like Breath and Shadow and Wordgathering play in disability culture? How do you feel they can influence what people think about people with disabilities?

Chris Kuell: The goal of the disability movement, and I do think of it as a movement, is to bring about a change in the way that society sees us. From a stereotype of "less than" to a new paradigm of unique person of value–which is how I try to think of everyone (Rush Limbaugh, I'm not so sure about). There is no single way to bring about such a societal shift in thinking, so it requires a multi-pronged approach. One of those prongs is through disability literature. Our goal, our hope, is to encourage people from all walks of life to dip their toe in the water and give us a try. I'm a writer, so obviously I'm biased, but I believe literature is a very powerful tool for change. If we can get them to dip that toe, we might get them to feel something new, to dissolve that stereotype and glimpse truth.

Breath & Shadow is a project of Ability Maine and is entirely written and produced by people with disabilities. If you're interested in fiction, poetry, essays, reviews, and other literature by disabled writers, Breath & Shadow is for you. For a free, quarterly email subscription, send an e-mail to  breathandshadow@gmail.com and put "subscribe" in the subject line. Or, for more information, visit Breath & Shadow's subscription page.

Thanks, Wordgathering, for this engaging interview! (And make sure to check out the rest of the September 2012 issue of Wordgathering for poetry, fiction, reviews, and essays from a wide variety of new and emerging writers.)