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brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
brokenwingpoet
@brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
140 followers 160 following 38 posts
Poet. Writing on disability & eco justice. Bedbound with Long COVID and Severe ME. 🍉 🇵🇸 🌲 🐦 😷
WILDNESS UNAFRAID, Kelsay Books (2026).
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brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
brokenwingpoet @brokenwingpoet.bsky.social · Feb 21
A bedbound poem on isolation and our frayed connection to the outer world that reminds us — we will always belong.

#LongCovid #MECFS #pwME #chronicillness
#poem #poetry
ID: A poem titled, “For These Brief Moments” with melodic piano music playing. I measure time by the angle dim slivers of light enter my room each morning from behind ever-closed curtains, by the way their faint glow subtly shifts through the day, until it fades beyond the reach of dusk. One year bedbound, I lose track of the natural world, the only place I didn’t question if I belonged. But strains of it still drift through walls in birdsong, distant banter of crows, whispered echoes of rain. Spring’s finches grow chummy in summer. Each day, around noon settling on the windowsill just above my head, bathing in the warmth of the sun for much of the afternoon. I can’t see them but hear soft scraping of claws scampering about, occasional fluttering of wings, bickerings over who sits where. And for these brief moments I am not lonely.
Reposted by brokenwingpoet
rollingstone.com
Long Covid Is Real — And It’s Changing an Entire Generation

Hundreds of thousands of kids in America are struggling with an illness that many doctors and schools refuse to recognize.e

Feature: www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...
October 16, 2025 at 12:00 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem for a season that better matches my mood and life.

#LongCovid #mecfs #pwme
Welcome Autumn Birdless skies become but another ceiling just painted blue, or mostly gray, come autumn. The change of seasons noticed by the shift in pitch of darkness. Fall gives an excuse to do what I always do, sit with a blanket in bed, hoping this will not be forever, but this time with a softness that holds me, that follows this restful time of year, the kind of softness I yearn for in summer but rarely find in its unrelenting bright, hot days.
September 29, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Reposted by brokenwingpoet
epistemiclit.bsky.social
More awards! Congratulations to our @genrepunkmag.bsky.social awards nominees!

@haleydirenzo.bsky.social
@jameslilliefors.bsky.social
@gretchenfilart.bsky.social
Allison Zaczynski
@brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
Arti Jain
Chelsea Allen
Mac Carey
Luis Lopez Galan
GENREPUNK AWARD NOMINATIONS EDITOR'S CHOICE HALEY DIRENZO | UPENDING THE GARDEN JAMES LILLIEFORS | THERE WILL BE WARNINGS GRETCHEN FILART | GARDENING DURING A DEPRESSIVE EPISODE DISABLED CREATIVES ALLISON ZACZYNSKI | ISOLATION TIM MURPHY | FOR THESE BRIEF MOMENTS WILDCARD ARTI JAIN | OF SONGS, THRESHOLDS, AND SLIPPERS HAUNTING CHELSEA ALLEN | SMOKE TRAILS MAC CAREY | LAST LIGHT LUIS LOPEZ GALAN | DIGNITY
September 12, 2025 at 5:18 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
Today is Severe ME Day. A poem imagining a world free of the ableism that compounds the trauma of this dreaded illness.

#SevereMEday #pwME #MECFS #SevereME
#ableism #bedbound
Like a Fallen Feather What if the ableism heaped higher the sicker we become, figments of a poisoned imagination suffocating our own, this anchor of shame not ours to carry, what if – for even just this moment – we released it completely? What if we could hold the disabled parts of ourselves in our own two hands the way one holds a fallen feather? Its soft, delicate lightness born on this wing to rise or when wounded to rest in the warm shelter of the nest as long as need be, dreaming of the demise of a culture that wishes, quickens our own, reborn as a community of care, where pain is seen and tended, not hidden and held alone, where the body is not a tool but a keeper of wisdom not meant to die untold, unheard.
August 8, 2025 at 5:05 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem about the simplicity of life that I miss.

#longcovid #mecfs #severeme #bedbound #millionsmissing #grief #covidisnotover #loss #chronicillness #chronicillnesscommunity #poetry #poetrycommunity
[ID: Calculating I’m so tired of calculating. Whether I can walk across a room or to the doorway to smell fresh air for the first time in days, to feel summer on my face. Whether I can listen to five minutes of an audiobook without drowning in malaise. I’m so tired of calculating every thought. Should I even be writing a poem right now? Shouldn’t I be resting in silent darkness? I spend most of my ever-drained battery on medical appointments, fighting insurance companies, trialing new drugs and riding waves of side effects. I’m so tired of calculating just to ration for small, fleeting moments, moments that sometimes resemble joy. Like the butterfly dancing with wind out my window, or the finch singing unseen in a nearby tree. I’m so tired of calculating. I miss the luxury of living.]
July 31, 2025 at 4:29 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
The genocide and forced starvation in Gaza is indefensible. It’s ethnic cleansing in plain view.

#freepalestine #endthegenocide

@bobbylefebre.bsky.social
Israel is starving Gaza. Line is repeated over and over again on an off white colored background, in typewriter font.
July 26, 2025 at 12:57 AM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
Long COVID anniversary on our anniversary. A day of grief with shadows of joy. The impossible lives disabled people are expected to live.

#LongCOVID #MECFS
#severeME #beebound
#poetry #grief
[ID: What If What if the happiest day of your life melted, dissolved backwards in time to become the day from which you may never recover? What if the moment that was yours became a kettle left on the burner too long, too hot for memory to touch? What if we lived in a world where disabilities were honored before doubted? Where those most sick were protected by those closest to them? Instead, I lie in bed, think the same thought that has no beginning nor end. Just a breath I took one day I’ll never know which one. Just a breath I took one day given to me by someone.]
July 8, 2025 at 9:10 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
New poem in Bed Zine. The loss of meaningful connection to nature is amongst the cruelest parts of this illness.

#LongCovid #MECFS
#Bedbound #SevereME
[ID: A poem titled “Severed” Severed Exiled by a living death disease, to a bed where trees go unseen, waves of wind unfelt, birdsong unheard. Even silence rings in my ears like howling grief echoes in this cave so dark I mistake its walls for skin.]
July 2, 2025 at 7:19 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
I’m excited to announce my debut poetry collection, “Wildness Unafraid,” has been accepted for publication! I’ll post more details as the release date gets closer.

#poetry #ecopoetry
#poetrycommunity
#ecojustice
June 8, 2025 at 6:08 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
On this M.E. Awareness Day, too tired to type more than these words.

#mecfs #pwme #millionsmissing
#meawarenessday
#mecfsawareness
ID: Poem titled “M.E. Awareness Day” The living death disease saps all life but keeps you living, wanting, longing for the life that was but is no more, yearning at least for a life, for a life that feels like you’re alive again, like there is something beyond this boundless sea and its wave after wave of suffering.
May 12, 2025 at 7:36 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A new poem in @hootreview about the constant, unwinding grief and loss of being indefinitely ill during a pandemic so few still observe.

#LongCovid #chronicillness #grief
#mecfs #pwme
[ID: A poem titled “Unhurried” Grieve as the snail slides unhurried yet everywhere they must reach they find. Grieve as the snail glides unbothered by expectations of time their pace as protective as their shell.
May 10, 2025 at 8:58 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem about surviving this torturous illness — by protecting dreams, finding our voice, and maintaining whatever connection we can to the outer world.

#LongCovid #pwME
#MECFS #SevereME
#disability #poem #poetry
How Sparrows Sing Even bedbound and splintered I know I can’t stay hidden forever. I have little choice even if unseen must find again my voice and remember remember how sparrows sing through coldest heart of winter as we dream through darkest hours of night.
April 8, 2025 at 10:09 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
The air we’re forced to share, poisoned by privilege.

#LongCovid #MECFS
#pwME #SevereME
#ableism #millionsmissing
#Covidisntover
ID: A poem titled “poisoned” Disabled. You can say it. Not a poison word. But we do live in ableds’ poisoned world.
April 5, 2025 at 6:44 PM
Reposted by brokenwingpoet
mileswgriffis.bsky.social
"The Severe....recognize the depths of the pit of horror that the Very Severe may find themselves stuck in...yet by leaning over to lend a hand, we risk falling further into the quicksand ourselves."

Vital op-ed by Sam Pearce in @thesicktimes.bsky.social

thesicktimes.org/2025/04/04/a...
An international emergency task force is urgently needed for Severe Long COVID and ME crisis cases - The Sick Times
Without one, Severe advocates are putting themselves at risk. It’s time for advocacy organizations to step up. Writer’s note: In this essay, I deliberately capitalize different categories of ME in ord...
thesicktimes.org
April 4, 2025 at 3:48 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A poem appearing in the Tiger Moth Review, about a heron I came to know before becoming bedbound, about our tenuous relationship to disability and the more than human world.

#poetry #naturepoetry
#ecopoetry #disability
#ecojustice #heron
[ID: A poem titled, Broken-Winged Heron At a small, wooded pond near where I live dwells a broken-winged heron. He does not exist to inspire wonder, though wonder he inspires. He possesses only himself, not pushing parts away to be whole or belong to something larger, for only one species insists disability must be fixed or assigned perpetual shame. No, the heron does not write dreams in the night of his wing mended but of the hunt that feeds him, comforts of nest that hold him, dangers he must ever know that breathe him into being. Encased in these walls, I still dream of that heron, still hope we meet again someday, must believe the beautiful creature is still alive, as well as one can be amidst unsettling times.]
March 29, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Reposted by brokenwingpoet
elisaperego78.bsky.social
The Covid pandemic isn't over. Almost 1,000 people died from Covid last week in the US alone. Given the lack of testing and surveillance, the real number might be much higher. And an estimated 400 millions have or had Long Covid worldwide
March 26, 2025 at 12:06 AM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
This is what eugenics looks like. Literally banning disabled people from safely existing.
cleanairclub.bsky.social Clean Air Club @cleanairclub.bsky.social · Mar 22
Re mask bans: sunglasses conceal people's identity more effectively than masks do, but everyone would object to a sunglasses ban.

The difference is that sunglasses are completely normalized accessibility devices, while masks have been pathologized as part of the total erasure of the pandemic.
March 22, 2025 at 11:00 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
As Israel and the US break the ceasefire yet again, a poem of mine that appeared in “Songs of Revolution.” The poem is sadly as relevant now as when it was written - at the beginning of this endless genocide.

#freepalestine #armsembargo #landback
#endapartheid
#permanentceasefirenow
A book titled “Songs of Revolution” with a picture of a watermelon sliced open lying on a plate. Bombed Away on Our Dime by TIM MURPHY So many casually cheering for a genocide, so many others floating in a sea of their own silence, apathy that drowns another's humanity, their right to live, makes anything, everything the war machine wants socially acceptable, even rewarded. Like we learned in school just manifest our destiny, the end. The end, no matter the means. Thousands of endings written from beginnings, no middle, no joyful last moments of innocence lost on their own terms, no chance at a life beyond their youth bombed away on our dime.
March 19, 2025 at 10:40 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
On Long COVID Awareness Day, a poem reflecting on the limits of awareness alone when not coupled with care.

#LongCovid #LongCovidAwarenessDay #pwME #MECFS
#ableism #disability
A poem titled “Long COVID Awareness Day” When your world shrinks to this size, most days feel less than alive, and you’re forced to wonder, who is really not aware of this disease, and who simply doesn’t care?
March 15, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by brokenwingpoet
kristinwrites.bsky.social
You know that feeling when you desperately want someone to get it, but they just…don’t?

#Disability #LongCovid #MECFS
March 12, 2025 at 10:43 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
As our government scrubs #LongCOVID from collective memory, a poem about what is happening to us.

#pwME #MECFS
#ableism #disabilityjustice
#millionsmissing #poetry
#poem #pandemic
A poem titled, Into Cement Disabled people didn’t cement their own demise. We were trampled just as we tried to stand, stuck as it dried pavement to skin, flattened by the stampede back to the normal, killing us all along.
March 12, 2025 at 8:18 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
A mourning poem for the 5 year anniversary. For all the avoidable deaths and the countless lives that, like mine, avoidably, were made to disappear in the dark.

#LongCovid #MECFS
#pwME #SevereME
#pandemic #ableism
#eugenics #CDCkills
ID: A poem titled “Endless’” Long Covid, what you call a disease when all you know is it may never end like this pandemic, like this pandemic we rendered endless by declaring over too soon.
March 10, 2025 at 10:38 PM
brokenwingpoet.bsky.social
Long COVID Awareness Month. Year 5 of the pandemic. A poem about the casual eugenics that, with each passing day, become more and more socially acceptable.

#LongCovid #millionsmissing
#MECFS #pwME
#disabilityjustice
#ableism #eugenics
#nothingaboutuswithoutus
ID: How a Virus Killed So Many People The truth we swallow without tasting bitterness is that most people don’t care if others die – too preoccupied with survival or themselves – they’ve grown numb to it, only care who died and how. And if the killer is not one with whom we wage war, not even one we can see, it can be said to not exist at all, no matter how many people it makes disappear.
March 10, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by brokenwingpoet
mileswgriffis.bsky.social
NEW: Millions will observe half a decade of #LongCOVID this year as the ongoing pandemic turns five.

For @thesicktimes.bsky.social, I wrote about the courage of millions of pwLC who have led the way in the face of so much willful indifference, cruelty, and denial.

thesicktimes.org/2025/03/07/h...
Half a decade of Long COVID - The Sick Times
Looking back on half a decade, there have been numerous milestones in Long COVID research, advocacy, and greater societal awareness, many led by people with the disease. There has also been, and conti...
thesicktimes.org
March 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM