TASHA CHEMEL

REDUCTION

At the airport, our handlers shove us all into wheelchairs
Our assorted ailments become one: a functional reduction.

My friend's tiny body cannot bear her breasts.
The doctors urge surgery; a compulsory reduction.

The man from match leaves my words and reads my chest.
I will not surrender to his unseductive reduction.

The audience cannot look away from my flickering fingers.
My poetry falls victim to their impulsive reduction.

Grief's cartographers claim they have no space for my pain.
Why do you embrace their deductive reduction?

You exile me from sunsets, shield me from watercolors.
I will always flinch from this unproductive reduction.

The light has enslaved us; we are deaf to the dark.
We are all guilty of a presumptuous reduction.

Tasha Chemel is a teacher, poet, and potter. She has been totally blind since birth, but identifies as transabled. She hopes that her work will open the door for other transabled people to come forward. She lives in Winooski, Vermont.