damp patches
began to appear I thought it was
just me dropping drinks
legally blind I only felt them with my feet
sanctuary house the effin
irony of it soon every room puddled
stinking blooms
of mildew I have problems
with my sweat glands because of my condition so
my skin would blister if I
tried to dry the place with heaters where
is all this water coming from?
the management is trying
to strike the right balance between keeping
disruption to an absolute minimum
and screwing me over now this
is a disability seriously
if I had money I’d be off before you could say
b. 1977
This poem is from Andy Jackson’s most recent full-length collection, Music Our Bodies Can’t Hold (2017). Each poem in the collection is a portrait of someone with or reputed to have had Marfan Syndrome. Many of the poems emerge out of personal interviews, while others are portraits of public figures: Abraham Lincoln, Akhenaten, Mary Queen of Scots , Edith Sitwell, Niccolo Paganini, John Tavener, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Robert Johnson, among others. The collection is available through Hunter Publishers.
