#attempting. through multiple lenses. to answer it). beauty becomes this factor to try and apprehend pain. to prison it and pull out its

[ravencromwell]

“Pain By Any Other Name” by Domiik Parisien

Let us for a moment call this pain by other words Ask, how many roses does the hammer weigh when it bears down on your skull? Does the sword seem toothed like a toddler's smile or sharp as your first iced skates? On a scale of anglerfish to northern lights how bright are the flashes in your head? When I touch this, here, which constellations light the sky behind your eyes? Would you say that pulsing is the flicker of a satellite or the stubborn heartbeat of a newborn chick? Ask, can we for a moment make of beauty the measure of our pain? And I will answer 

--from the collection Side Effects May Include Strangers

#Dominik Parisien #my new #poetry obsession--mostly because all his work centers around either #disability #or #queer stuff #the metaphors in this! I sat in on this insanely brilliant poetry convo tonight and one of the professors and I were talking about the ways #in which. both in this piece. and in the collection as a whole (a whole meditation beginning from the premise of this question and #attempting. through multiple lenses. to answer it). beauty becomes this factor to try and apprehend pain. to prison it and pull out its #sting as means of making it bearable. and honestly. that's the thing that all marginalized folk are trying to do. but especially those #of us suffering both from external aggressions and the betrayal of our bodies: to fill our lives with enough joy to counteract the pain and #limitation