November 1, 2023

Injury Room

Katie Ford

Through my
little window, I
see one day
the entire bird,
the next just
a leeward wing,
the next
only a painful
call, which, without
the body, makes
beautiful attachments
by even
attaching at
all.

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“To speak plainly, I’ve been living with the aftermath of a brain injury since late 2020, a type of injury I knew nearly nothing about until it belonged to me. The isolating effects of being able to bear little light, sound, or motion are behind this bedroom poem, which the wonderful poet Carolyn Hembree, when I shared it with her, called a ‘torn sonnet.’ Being able to write again returns me to the fact that poetry is willing to absorb, and become, what's torn.”
—Katie Ford

Katie Ford is the author of If You Have to Go (Graywolf, 2018), Blood Lyrics (Graywolf, 2014), Colosseum (Graywolf, 2008), and Deposition (Graywolf, 2002). The recipient of the Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Larry Levis Reading Prize, she is a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.

If You Have to Go
(Graywolf, 2018)

“From the Ground It Must Have Looked Like Its Wings Were Not a Part of It” by Shane McCrae
read more

“Snow White” by Katherine Riegel
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Thanks to Steve Bellin-Oka, author of Instructions for Seeing a Ghost (University of North Texas Press, 2020), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Bellin-Oka’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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