Posted on | Poetry

Ward

Window:what allows you to see out
what separates you from what you see
your only chance
Ward:to keep away
to safeguard
guarded place you are kept
Touched:honored
possessed
violated
See someone:a lover
a therapist
a hallucination
Murder:crows
a dying
Institution:me and all my friends
a dying
Form:a body
a set of rules
a set of empty spaces to fill out at the front desk
Derange:to go crazy
to finally leave a restricted range
Commitment:you’re staying
you’re staying
Chronic:lasting forever
not dead yet
Cavity:an emptiness
a failure to care for yourself like a child
no toothbrush allowed

Rob Macaisa Colgate is a disabled, bakla, Filipino American poet from Evanston, Illinois. He received an MFA in poetry and critical disability studies from UT Austin. Poems from this collection appear or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Best New PoetsNew England ReviewThe Margins, and elsewhere. A former Fulbright scholar, Rob currently serves as the managing poetry editor at Foglifter.

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