Translating Chronic Pain: Moments and Fragments

'Flash' writing anthology about chronic pain - submissions welcome!

Tag: body (Page 3 of 8)

‘hail mary’, by Nicole Schafenacker

August 28, 2018 /

she is in the sauna drinking coke and eating salted peanuts

one knee resting against the hot wood, silvery hair damp and sticking to her shoulders

we discuss midwifery and the what it’s like to catch a slippery baby

in your palms

she is standing in seal skin coat with white fur collar beside the church

mid afternoon sun coming through jewel red of stain glass window

holding a cigarette to her lips exhaling smoke and warm breath

casual flick of ash hitting the ice

i can’t say what it is about these chance encounters that reel me in

give me something to latch onto

but mystery in itself can be a sustainer for the curious

there is no such thing as “meant to be”

things are just happening – miraculous, mundane things –

and why do we need more than that?

all is as it is as it is, amen

 

  • by Nicole Schafenacker

WordPress: https://nicoleschafenacker.wordpress.com/

 

Canada

‘The Break of Day’, by Jacqueline Woods

August 26, 2018 /

Pain paralyses. 
It hurts too much to move,
to unlock, unhinge my joints,
put pressure on my tender limbs.

I will wait for my Carer: 
my lover, my friend,
who will lift me from my bed,
magnificently.

My arms encircle his neck
as I breathe in the salty sunshine
of his skin, pressing my lips against
the cool ripple of his shoulder blade.

He carries me to a bathroom
of sunken marble and satin cushions, 
a garland of candles guides our way,
I am Ophelia light: baptised, reborn.

His devotion will wash 
the wounds of night away,
unclench the claws which trap
my dreams.

I will bathe in his tenderness:
my twisted hands and swollen knees
brave and beautiful
in his eyes.

All will be well
when he arrives.

 

UK

‘Growth?’, by @RoseClue, @ Advanced Wizards, @Watercolors,

August 6, 2018 /

a watercolor image of a tree with five branches ,shaped like a hand, each finger one color of the rainbow, but after a certain point in the trunk each color becomes muddled together in a confusing mess. A caption in red block letters that “bleed” into the background like scratches reads, “from pain comes growth” with a question mark.

Where does it even start? 
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
How can I tell each apart?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
Where does it even end?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
Why isn’t my body my friend? 
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know

 

  • by @RoseClue (twitter, instagram), @ Advanced Wizards, @Watercolors (facebook)

USA

‘Metamorphosis’, by Marion Michell

June 8, 2018 /

When the pain goes I half suppose my flesh marked, transformed. A growth of lichen, say, with its warm turmeric tint; a layer of cool, silvery fish-scales; traces of the glacial burn of chain-mail melting into skin. Best of all a delicate, graceful articulation of relief on the site of its worst excesses: once the sharp, piercing jolts give over to prickling, tingling sensations (as if the top of my skull were open or at least porous), the tiniest, downiest feathers could unfurl in the round, a bit like a peacock’s crest – thin stalks topped with trembling blowballs.

But there is nothing, not a wound, not a bruise, not even the flushed tone of a limb pressed against the mirror, straining elsewhere.

A small crochet work, of a shiny ochre hue, is laid out on a piece of white paper.

(A small crochet work, of a shiny ochre hue, is laid out on a piece of white paper. Dense stitches amass around an empty centre, as if framing a face, becoming looser and looser and turning into ever wider swinging loops. A bit like Medusa’s serpent hair, only less dangerous. In the empty centre, where, were it a face, the mouth would be, lies a small pink square of paper with a black circle from which a thin line protrudes, describing a marker, or corner, or the beginnings of an arrow.)

  • by Marion Michell

 

SUPINELY SUBLIMELY (Book) 
Blog
Art 

United Kingdom

‘The Grinder’, by Alan Horne

June 1, 2018 /

We pay the cable from the reel in staggers, 
jerk the squiggly line between the bushes,
wake the minor aches, the none too vicious 
graters in the knee that love to grab us.

Nothing lightweight in the gear for this one:
the Black and Decker like a struggling toddler; 
the squeaky derricks of our legs manoeuvred
round the pain to give the tools a platform.

Though it’s money saved; and while the gripe’s curtailed 
we crouch to proud, redundant, bent old nails 
which squeal against the grinder, scattering in the nettles 
tiny marigolds of blistered metal 
until the shanks resign, the flat heads flying. 
But how to rise, from those smoking stumps of iron?

 

  • by Alan Horne

United Kingdom

twitter @mralanhorne

‘She asks if it’s raining outside’, by Jane Hartshorn

May 19, 2018 /

She asks if it’s raining outside while she takes my blood pressure. I ask if I should take my shoes off before I stand on the scales. Sharp scratch, she says before she slides in the needle. Four vials of blood, all with sticky labels. I take the foil plate into the cubicle, slip on the purple latex gloves. My name is printed on the side of the plastic tube. The body makes the slow transition to data.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how painful are your joints? I try to measure my pain. She presses on my knee and I gurgle, spit out my tongue. My body is unmarked, conceals the grinding of bones. No sign of swelling here, she says. Writes it down. Ghost-bodied, I float somewhere on an interface, alongside the sick. Sleeping whales suspended in the blue. We sing the numbers of our suffering.

  • by Jane Hartshorn

Scotland

‘NIGHT SWEATS’, by Blair James

May 11, 2018 /

you sit in my throat like a stone in shoe 

eyes dry as bone. bones hurt. 

why cry? 

these days that feel different but all so same. 

little belly wrenches all the time as though to be freed from something 

tonsils i should rip them from my neck. daft neck 

neck forever stiff 

but why should neck feel at ease when i remain so needlessly static 

lose my reasons every day 

and think of new 

you div 

ask yourself what time it is. what day 

become like a teddy bear. 

apples hurt my mouth but i still eat them. 

how life is unfair. 

why must i scratch my skin? 

not fair on you 

to have everything 

daffodils. i used to kick their heads off. weak. 

it follows me round everywhere. 

what’s the point in being alive when you’re dead 

how can you sleep when you’re wet 

wet

  • by Blair James

United Kingdom

 

‘Poor Growing Season’, by Miranda Cichy

May 11, 2018 /

 

 

  • by Miranda Cichy

 

The year I grew tomatoes 
I had no understanding 
that my body was failing, 
how the plants needed 
more earth than I could give them,
out in the yard
on a concrete bed, 
hunkered in pots 
the size of my skull. I 
fed them too early, I
forgot to pierce
the container holes
and June drowned them.
You can try too hard
to care for something,
and I watched through 
the dusty window
as the summer shifted,
as my body took 
a spade to itself, dug 
and re-dug, broke 
roots until the soil was raw. 
Good days unfurl 
in bad years
like yellow flowers, sometimes 
the fruit does set. But
the tomatoes I picked
were swollen, their faces
multiplied, the seeds like grit,
stems bending from the sticks 
that were meant to hold them up.

  • by Miranda Cichy

United Kingdom

 

‘D is for Dysesthesia’, by Gillian Shirreffs

May 10, 2018 /

 

 

 

 

D is for Dysesthesia
It’s also for dictionary. I’m very fond of mine. I was given it as a gift in 1993. Emblazoned on the front are the following statements:
• The foremost dictionary of current English: now thoroughly revised and expanded
• 120,000 entries and 190,000 definitions
• Over 20,000 entries new to this edition

I looked up the word dysesthesia. It’s not there. Neither is its alternate spelling: dysaesthesia.

D is for Difficult
It’s difficult to describe dysesthesia. However, the clue is in the name. I’ve learned it’s from the Greek ‘dys’, for bad, and ‘aisthesis’, for sensation. So, bad sensation. In practice, for me, this means my fingers might feel as though they’re being ground in a vice or my thighs like they’ve been splashed with acid. Or, sometimes, it’s the reverse.

 

  • by Gillian Shirreffs

USA (although I’m from Scotland originally)

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