Category: Autistic Protest Poetry

navigation

                                    people are like cities in that you need
three apps to navigate them without getting lost
& at least a few furtive DMs in the bathroom
of a crumbling theatre venue & you still don’t know

where to find your trinkets and eternities lost—
you fall asleep in the void that fills my lungs
& i sing rumors and false promises to you
then take a does she like me? quiz on the internet
and feel like an idiot. only you could make me

have a public freakout in the middle of
a suburb that is every suburb that is every dilapidated TV set
that is every worldbuilding project i abandoned
when i was three & you say all of two words and i stretch out
every syllable like an anthem & make a mixtape for you then
swear that it was about an OC. keep finding ways to tell you

that only make me look pathetic—because asking if you want
our d&d characters to date is easier—than asking you to gently
undo me like the glow of unspoken desires and blue light, blue moods,
                                                                                                                     am i alive?

 

mk zariel {it/its} is a transmasculine neuroqueer poet, theater artist, movement journalist, and insurrectionary anarchist. it is fueled by folk-punk, Emma Goldman, and existential dread. it can be found online at mkzariel.carrd.co/, creating conflictually queer-anarchic spaces, writing columns for Asymptote and the Anarchist Review of Books, and being mildly feral in the great lakes region. it is kinda gay ngl.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

from TENET: nest of tens

 

10-toed antenna (it/its/it5elf) is the cure8or of Ↄalamari Arↄhive, makes music as Sound Furies + blogs at 5cense.com. It has never taken a writing class (its academic background is in math + then physics/philosophy) + is afflicted by Ménière’s (deaf in 1 ear + constant “10-itus” that it “2ns in2”), clanging syndrome + number-form synesthesia/dyslexia, in addition to probably being “on the spectrum.”

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Autistic gender failure tries to get a diagnosis

If they come for trans people, I will not be able to leave. I feel like a plastic mug, I am bound to certain places. My mother says I should not be afraid of the fascists. I ask my father if he still loves me if I cannot work. I tell my father that my gender differs from the one I was assigned at birth. It’s the same call. All my friends bring fidget toys to the plenum. We destroy the system on crip time. My mother sees no sense in visible resistance. I ask her how I can exist then I walk on bare feet and bite my fingernails. The welfare office wants to determine if I am eligible for getting a diagnosis. The welfare office wants me to kill myself. My friends and I gather around the neurobox. I can write you a poem with communication cards. I can write you a blackout poem out of welfare application documents. My friends and I we barely exist. My friends and I we exist barely. Head shorn, feet quite firmly on the ground. Today I wear nothing but a binder. I am a plastic mug, not easily broken.

 

Willow Bram Desjardins (they/them) is a writer from northern Germany, currently studying philosophy. Their poems revolve around queer embodiment, disability, and sometimes around ducks. They have work published in Corporeal and The Reprise. In their free time they are found crafting or hanging out at local goth events.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Cento for Autistic Poets Whose Words Offer a Map of Possibility When My Words Are Lost

I wish I could write poems where the poem’s alive marched,
hands in the dirt, head in the sun –
Listen, a godsong is in the bees.
Each seed is a portal the shape of your before and after.

Invariably, the sun invades:
there’s cause and effect and there’s a simple
lusting real ludicrous idea
that there is only one ideal way to be which we should all strive for.

They say each poem’s an engine w/ an animal heart.
Wholed by a light at the snuff of your day,
autistic. Please love poets we are the first
who do not yield to their authority.

What is the meaning of a mountain of masks?
Any other face is fed to the waves that brought you.

This poem is made of lines borrowed from (in order of appearance): Jane Shi, J.D. Harlock, Jaia Hamid Bashir, Shel Moring, DJ Savarese, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Adam Wolfond, Troels Steenholdt Heiredal, torrin a. greathouse, Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, Hannah Emerson, Tiezst Taylor, Lauren Russell, and Leslie McIntosh.

 

Derek Yen writes code in the mornings and everything else in the evenings. He keeps returning to ideas of illness, technology, and speculative imagination. His writings have been published in Seventh Wave, Lucky Jefferson, A Velvet Giant, and No, Dear. He shares an apartment in Brooklyn with his partner, their dog, and several houseplants. Find him on Instagram @derekiswriting.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Psalm

I haven’t written in months / A poet
should be a prismatic, faceted chrysalis
Cabochon sentiment is vulgar, unpublishable
“No more breakup poetry, please”
Say the glittering butterflies / And so

I haven’t written in months
The political climate leaves me speechless
I want to hurl breakup poems-slash-javelins
at the politicians who revile me / And
pin their wings for once / Help me
I’m trapped in a bruising marriage
with this red-handed Nation / I can’t leave Him
He beats me into silence
I play the piano when He’s out at the bars
He hates my music / I have no money

I haven’t written in months
I miss hearing birdsinging outside my bedroom
at 4am in summer darkness / Open-windowed
five years ago in the old port / Watermuzak
Before I entered my husband’s manse,
forests on every street / Maples / Dogwoods
Rivers of pollen in the gutters / Pure white
In this silence, I dream I slay the dragon
But nobody wants poems of weary nights
They want Baccarat genius, Hermès velvet

God shrive me / I haven’t written in months
Pentimento of sin waketh me compline to lauds
Hard to wake from my grief to pen iridescence
when I’m faced with losing my Social Security
and Civil Security / and Whatnot / I grow scutes
I’ve stopped waiting to be granted Mercy
by anyone who meets me / God shrive my mayfly-
self / I have that kind of personality I guess
Save the jet’s passengers / rob their purses
My mistake for thinking God would grant Mercy
like a hydrant spraying in August city swelter

Below these wings / I went to a model train fair
My mother drove me / How nice of her
She thinks her horned, decrepit politicians would save us
from their kindred / if only they held a Supermajority
I can’t convince her otherwise / I fear her
Look at all the little trains run and run
around in their same old tracks without an exit
just like our lives

 

Sean Eaton is a gay, autistic poet from New England, USA. Past publication credits include Hawaii Pacific Review, The Queens Review, and About Place Journal.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

seasons, remixed

Winter has left us & now is the summer of autism
screams. The dandelions rock back & forth in
their chairs outside the new flag they put up
drying in the sunlight & I’m lost in a vintage
store with yellow lights yellow brights
yellow mites the color of waiting
in a hospital room of when my grandmother had cancer
& when I will have my breasts removed. Artificial banana
syrup & fertilizer — the smells of my friend’s cat. Chicken poop,
chocolate, childhood where I sit reading the magic school
bus all day & where my favorite book was the manual of infant
illnesses & where I played doctor w my imaginary
friends. Such good patients, they were. I wonder if any
of my toys were self diagnosed too. The council of stuffed
animals have met & discussed your accommodation
request – congratulations! You’ve been branded
one of us. Magnolia bloom & it’s the season I
walk on my tiptoes too – can people who walk with their
entire feet not see the worms drowning in all this
air? After each storm each law each angry face
book post: noli me tangere. Every iamb a promise of not
hurting: I will tread your way. I will (try &) not step
on you. I want to lie the fuck down & I will today.
Come, and I dare you. Step over me too.

 

Yufan Lu (they/them) is a writer from Beijing, China. They’re a recent graduate of Kenyon College and a current MA student at the University of British Columbia. Their works have been published in HIKA, Lyceum, and Periwinkle Pelican, and will be published in beestung.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Duplex for [Autistic] Sovereignty.

after Jericho Brown

Humanity is more than capacity:
Autism is a site of resistance.

          Autism is a site of resistance,
            What do you fear of those who can’t conform?

What do you fear of those who won’t conform?
Complacency is key to fascism.

           When you fascists demand complacency,
           Diversity is a mark of freedom.

Our freedom is marked by diversity,
Conformity, a death wish for Disableds.

            We Disableds wish death to conformity!
           That which truly liberates, liberates all.

That which frees us, shall also free you:
Humanity is more than capacity.

 

Tiezst “Tie” Taylor is a Disabled Black femme who is non-binary trans. They are a radical educator, artist-activist, poet, and storyteller. Their work explores their experiences in surviving intersecting forms of oppression in the U.S. Tiezst is an Emerge 2025 Fellow with San Francisco State University’s Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability where they are working on an essay for publication on the criminalization of mental illness as it intersects with Black woman / femme identity. They were a Spring 2024 Brooklyn Poets Fellow and a past awardee of the NYSCA/NYFA Artists with Disabilities Grant. Follow Tiezst on Instagram @tiezst.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

A Snowy Night in Reno after Getting an Extra MMR due to Sudden Travel Restrictions in Response to RFK Jr’s Measles Epidemic in Samoa

These are kids who will never pay for spray tan.
They’ll never hold a pen to sign
deportation orders. They’ll never play
neutral to an invader and the people bloodied and collapsed
They’ll never write executive orders. They’ll never go out
with Republicans. Many of them will never use
a woman’s body for their unpermitted pleasure.

These are kids who will never pave over historic
rose gardens. They’ll never hold
the security clearance to know how much of what we live on, we stole.
They’ll never play Risk with real soldiers.
They’ll never write this poem. They’ll never go
to prom. Many of them will never
wear jeans or itchy gowns.

These are kids who will never feel comfortable
in gas masks. They’ll never know the joy of belonging
to a line tapping out a riot shield beat. They’ll never wear
bullet proof vests. They’ll never scale walls
they haven’t imagined. Many of them will never imagine
a world you’ll understand.

These are kids who will never pay for lip fillers, art
-fully broken bones. They’ll never know the pleasure of connection
found in small talk and shared
financial advisors. They’ll never plot
a real coup—or not one they can rally masses to—they’ll never
win. They’ll never go
to Washington. Many of them will never leave
home on weekends.

These are kids who will never give teeth to gears.
They’ll never feel comfortable keeping teeth either.
They’ll never stop probing their teeth with their tongues.
They’ll never fit in.
They’ll never stop rocking.
                                            Many of them will never be found.

 

Elizabeth Kate Switaj (elizabethkateswitaj.net) is a neurodivergent poet originally from Seattle and currently living on Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Her sequence, The Articulations, was published in 2024 as part of a tête-bêche from Kernpunkt Press; her chapbook, Serial Experiments, was published this year by Alien Buddha Press. Her second full-length collection of poetry, The Bringers of Fruit: An Oratorio (11:11 Press, 2022), won the 2023 Whirling Prize.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO