- Wordgathering was founded in March 2007 by members of the Inglis House Poetry Workshop, a collaborative of writers with disabilities who reside at Inglis House in Philadelphia, Pa. Though Wordgathering is deeply committed to poetry, they also accept literary essays, short fiction and books of poetry for review. Their aim is to give voice to the emerging genre of disability literature; therefore, they seek work related to disability or by writers with disabilities.
The editor-in-chief is Michael Northen. Associate editors are Linda A. Cronin and Sheila Black. Eliot Spindel is the webmaster and provider of technical support. Founding emeritus members are Stuart Sanderson, Dana Hirsch, Yvette Green and Denise March. Wordgathering hosts a Facebook for writers interested in keeping up with the work of authors published here. It can also be found on Twitter @wordgathering where it promotes the recent work of writers with disabilities and related issues. Wordgathering is affiliated with Dispoet, a blog for the discussion of disability and poetry, and proud to be connected with the work of writers with disabilities in the Beauty is A Verb anthology.
Submission guidelines: http://www.wordgathering.com/guidelines.html
I have had many poems published in Wordgathering.
“Shards,” Published in September, 2008
Shards
The hand will not do her bidding—not fasten a button
nor a necklace, or grasp a knife, and the first time
she dropped the yellow chalk this year was nothing
only a bother to bend, retrieve, and place the broken
pieces on the dusty ledge near the fancy blue and green
chalk, and continue her talk on the failure of John
and Elizabeth Proctor’s marriage in The Crucible.
The second time she dropped the chalk, she felt
her balance go when she bent to pick it up.
She leaned toward the scattered shards, and thought
she heard someone say, Butterfingers. . . . That day
the notes on the board were almost illegible, but she
read them as if they breathed the passion she felt.
Despite her lack of control or maybe because of it,
she let herself play with the idea of fashioning a mosaic
with the green, blue, and orange chalk to mix with
the yellow. Soon, she gave up on her hands working,
but still trusted her legs till the day a book bag interfered
with her progress and down she went, as ungraceful
as Ethan Frome with a woman. That night, her husband
kept the bruise from swelling and the ice felt good,
she thought, better than the classroom floor.
The next day, The Scarlet Letter awaited; Hester
and Arthur and Pearl could not, would not, be denied.
MARIE KANE -- POETRY & WRITING 