by Kobus Moolman<\/p>\n
In 2008, while on a residency at the Caversham Centre for Writers and Artists in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, I wrote, in a single sitting late one afternoon, a cycle of six poems about various parts of my body. There was \u2018The Hand\u2019, \u2018The Foot\u2019, \u2018The Foot (the other one)\u2019, \u2018The Shoulder\u2019, \u2018The Foot Re-visited\u2019, and \u2018The Wrist\u2019.<\/p>\n
The six sections represent a watershed for me; in language, in subject matter, and in form. They were the first time that I had spoken directly in my writing about, by speaking directly from<\/em>, my own disabled body, and its affected, significant parts. It was my body defined in medical terminology as having a congenital spina bifida<\/em> present from birth from L5 down to S5.<\/p>\n By drawing attention in an unqualified and direct manner to the disabled body as a valid subject of aesthetic representation, the poems (published in my 2010 collection Light and After<\/em>) propose not only a movement of disability from marginalisation to the centre, but moreover demonstrate a radical challenge to notions of the normative and speak thus directly to issues of inclusion and social justice in our society.<\/p>\n The poems enact a figurative use of language that makes possible a rigorous confrontation with the uniqueness of my sense of my own atypical embodiment. In these poems, I succeeded, I believe, in fashioning a complex interweaving of metaphoric language that was able to transmute the closed specificity of individual lived experience into a set of evocative codes which allowed a reader imaginative access to that experience even though they might a) not ever have shared it, such as disability, or b) might not even be sure precisely what is being described.<\/p>\n In \u2018The Foot\u2019 reference is made to \u2018a hole\u2019: \u201cThe foot is a hole made by a shard \/ of memory\u201d. On one level this is a direct reference to an unhealed ulcer on the ball of my left foot (which I have had for more than thirty years as a result of poor circulation), but crucially the image also operates beyond that specific knowledge: it speaks to any experience of absence, of loss, buried in the past.<\/p>\n Furthermore, in the poem \u2018There is something about his right hand\u2019 (published in Left Over<\/em>, 2013), we encounter the consequences of radical surgery to correct an Arnold-Chiari Malformation. This is a structural defect in the cerebellum and spinal cord frequently associated with spina bifida, and most often occurring during foetal development. Mine, however, decided to wait until I was in my fourth year at university. I was treated, and fortunately recovered much of the strength in my right arm and hand which had been seriously affected. But there are some functions that my hand still cannot perform (clicking my fingers for example), and the right side of my body is without any sensation. Moreover, the invasive surgery (which had to cut deep into my right shoulder to install a PVC shunt at the top of my spine) was only aggravated by the fact that since my early thirties I have had to use a cane.<\/p>\n This biographical actuality provides the departure point for these poems, but I strongly resist reducing them to simple reportage on a medical condition. I am less interested in the literal content or meaning of particular references, and more interested in what happens at that point where the reader is forced to abandon their expectation of the confessional and the demand for veracity, and in so doing is encouraged to enter into the \u2018other\u2019 life that the language of my poems set up \u2013 a particular experience of being in the world and being in the body, an experience attested to in the last three lines of \u2018There is something about his right hand\u2019, where the register shifts from reportage to allusion. This shift problematises the assumed resemblance between the textual subject and myself as author. In so doing, possibilities are opened in the text, not just for alternate ways of reading and understanding, but for more complex and deeper ways of understanding social justice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Foot<\/strong><\/p>\n The foot is a hole. The foot is a stone. The hole smells like words left a long time The foot is a hole made by a shard And the flakes of water flew.<\/p>\n And the flakes of water fell. Its new name was loss. The foot remembers the brown lake The foot remembers the brown lake I hold the foot in my hand every night, The foot pretends that it has something to say. But to be honest, Published in Light and After<\/em> (deep south, 2010)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Foot (the other one)<\/strong><\/p>\n The other foot is stupid. Published in Light and After<\/em> (deep south, 2010)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Surgery List <\/strong><\/p>\n Close-up. <\/em><\/p>\n #i. At the base of his spine. #ii. #iii. #iv. Right wrist, circular, jagged, #v. #vi. #vii.
\nA stone.
\nA black stone.
\nA hole made by the stone
\nbefore the hole was made.
\nA hole that the stone cannot get out of,
\nno matter how black, and blacker still,
\nits skin goes \u2013
\nuntil its skin begins to crack, and
\npieces flake off.
\nPieces of rock falling into
\nthe black hole that the foot grows
\nbeneath its shadow.<\/p>\n
\nUnderneath the stone is a hole
\nthat spreads and shrinks and
\nspreads again as the wind blows.<\/p>\n
\nin the crevice between two teeth.
\nLike words that have been closed up
\ntoo long in the dark pit of the mouth.
\nSweating all night. And sleepless
\nin the day.<\/p>\n
\nof memory.
\nIt walked through black mud
\none morning on the edge of a brown lake,
\nwhere the birds waded deep up to their cries,
\nup to their blue wings.
\nIt walked through the black mud and
\ninto the lake.
\nAnd the water was not cold,
\nthe foot said.
\nCome in, the foot said. The water is warm.
\nLook.
\nAnd it bent and scooped up the old skin
\nfrom off the surface of the lake and
\nthrew it up into the air.<\/p>\n
\nAnd the foot came up out of the water
\nand it was red.
\nIt was red where the flakes of water
\nhad fallen upon it and cut it \u2013
\ncalled out to it its new name.<\/p>\n
\nAnd rot.<\/p>\n
\nalways, and longs to return
\nto the warm water, to the impenetrable depths,
\nlurking with the voices of fishes.<\/p>\n
\nwith its long waving hair and its green eyes,
\nand the foot wants to laugh again, loudly,
\nthe way the long grass does.
\nIt wants to laugh again.
\nBut there is a hole.
\nThere is the hole made by the red stone
\nthat does not heal. Ever.
\nThe hole that never closes over.
\nEven when it seems to.<\/p>\n
\nspit onto it.
\nI spit into its red hole and
\nmix the spit with sand and honey,
\nand pack it full. I pack the hole full
\nevery night, and when I go to sleep
\nI dream that the hole is growing a skin over it.
\nThat a wide bridge is falling out of the sky,
\nand that it lands on the foot,
\nand that it covers the deep distance
\nbetween the edges of the red hole.<\/p>\n
\nThat the fishes in the brown lake and
\nthe birds in the air and the stones, too,
\nin the black desert
\nwant to hear what it has to say.<\/p>\n
\nit has all been said before.<\/p>\n
\n
\nAnd small.
\nAnd not worth talking about.<\/p>\n
\n
\nSubtitled:<\/u> The beginning.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nSnake-like. No other description.
\nAfter 50 years
\nit is still sensitive to the touch.<\/p>\n
\nRight leg, below the knee,
\nvertical, 10cms with
\n6 cross-stitches. To keep him
\non the straight and narrow.<\/p>\n
\nRight foot, outside ankle,
\ncrescent-moon, approximately 12cms,
\nfaded stitches, impossible to count.
\nIn order to stop him
\ngoing over.<\/p>\n
\nSubtitled<\/u>:\u00a0 The practice.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n4cms with no stitches.
\nWindows are actually meant
\nfor looking through.<\/p>\n
\nLeft foot, outside ankle,
\ncrescent-moon, approximately 12cms,
\nwith 8 cross-stitches.
\nBecause this one was going
\nthe same way as the other.<\/p>\n
\nSame foot, top of ankle,
\nvertical, 10cms with
\n6 cross-stitches. Because
\nhe had to be pulled back
\nwith force.<\/p>\n
\nSame again, inside ankle,
\n1.5cms, no stitches. Just
\na nick from an electric saw with
\nrotating blade used to remove
\nold plaster cast.<\/p>\n