Let's build our wings on the way down

Liv Mammone: trying to be a poet and a person. What's going on with my work and also things that inspire me. Bisexual. Physically disabled. Also on Facebook, Twitter, and Wordpress

[livmammone]

The most Appropriate Shirt to wear on a birthday. https://www.instagram.com/p/CghlRPdOoSk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[livmammone]

WE HAVE ANOTHER LILAC BUSH. This is the first year I have been able to have lilac and peony at the same time. Also some lupine! https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd3pXA_u5Cs/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[livmammone]

Today is World Cerebral Palsy day so here I am on the access ramp at Sunnydale High. There might be demons and vampires, but there’s ADA compliance on the Hellmouth. (at Torrance High School) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbi5nVIr8_k/?utm_medium=tumblr

[livmammone]

Representing my faves. I make a mask look FANTASTIC. (at Savannah, Georgia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CObL6_1ho6h/?igshid=ao4puu0hd4wl

[livmammone]

So today is apparently World Cerebral Palsy day and here’s how I feel about that.

imagine if you lived in a country where you were fluent in the language except for a single phrase, and at the end of EVERY conversation someone had about or with you they said this bit of syllables. And sometimes they said it in a whisper, sometimes they laughed, sometimes it was in the form of a question, sometimes like they were cursing you. Imagine you saw it written on buildings and official documents but no matter what words surrounded it, your reading comprehension was never quite good enough and no matter how many times you asked for a translation, you only got shuffling and mumbling in reply. Eventually, this phrase would mean something to you, hearing it as often as you did. But what?

Imagine if somebody asked you: why is there a sky? How could you answer that? It's all around you. You live underneath it. Sometimes it rains and on those days you don't like it. Some days you don't even look up at it. It's everywhere. Imagine if other people didn't see the sky and were always asking you to define it for them.

These are the two best metaphors I can come up with. I wish the words Cerebral Palsy made me feel something. But it just feels like syllables puffing out into the air. I feel vacuous when I hear them. You can't use them to compare me to other people who live underneath them.They inform every aspect of my life and yet the two words themselves don't say anything about me.

You might as well call it World Sky Day. How would we mark that? Would we each look up for a second? Take a selfie every minute to try and watch it change? Would we measure our breaths? ‪#‎worldcerebralpalsyday‬

[livmammone]

Contributing to the Medicated and Mighty hashtag on Twitter

[a girl with a shaved head in a sweater outdoors holding up a bottle of prescription pills]

[livmammone]

NEW PUBLICATIONS EVERYWHERE

Heyyyyyy everyone!

These last two weeks have been great ones for me on the publishing front. 3 of my favorite poems, little redheaded children that I thought were far too specific and nerdy to ever get published, have found a home in this month's Freeze Ray. Here you can read "Venus di Milo Answers a Tumblr Feminist," "Elegy for James Darmody," and "The Graverobber". CHECK IT! THERE'S A GRAPHIC AND EVERYTHING OMG: http://www.freezeraypoetry.com/liv-mammone.html

In addition, a whopping FIVE of my poems will now be forthcoming in the new anthology QDA, more on that to come. If you are curious, you'll be able to hear some of those poems TOMORROW at Artists Without Walls

[livmammone]

Call for thoughts and feelings!

Greetings all! So, I have been commissioned to write a piece, "Advice to an Able Poet Entering a Disability Workshop." Do any of you beautiful people want to hit me with ideas about what your advice would be? What spaces have you been in talking about disability where there were able people? What were your positive/negative experiences? Bonus points for humor!

[livmammone]

Going to be on the radio tomorrow with my sister!

Hey all! 

So as some of you may know, after poetry, my favorite thing to talk about ever in the world is Phantom of the Opera. Books, films, theater--any adaptation is m  y jam, as well as my sister’'s, red-death-stalking-abroad. We are both going to be featured on The Bookmark tomorrow at 9am East Coast Time on WMSU 91.7 FM where we’ll be reading from phantom books, listening to music inspired by the story, and talking about its enduring effects. JOIN US!

You will be able to stream the show at http://wsum.org during showtime! Also like the station as well as The Bookmark on Facebook.

::dramatic outro on the pipe organ:: DUHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUH...

[livmammone]

I fed a giraffe yesterday; his name was Ceaser!

Headed to the Baltimore zoo with the greatest friend, awriterswanderlust, who helped me fulfill my dream of petting a giraffe. 

Why is this so important to me? Well, the poem explaining why just found a home in the Medical Journal of Australia! You can read it here.

[livmammone]

Come see me rock out!

Hey guys!

I have had the honor to be chosen as the social media associate for Artists Without Walls, a Manhattan performance space aimed at promoting diverse artists of all mediums. AWOW gave me a huge leg up by featuring me at a showcase in 2014, and have asked me back to their next one to celebrate this appointment.

I’ll be throwing down 10 minutes of poem glitter tomorrow alongside several other genius, incomparable performers. Starting at 6:45 until 9:45pm at:

The Cell Theater 338 W 23rd St, New York, New York 10011

Read more about the event here

[livmammone]

On lonely

I've heard a lot of poets, both peers and in my wider reading, talk about how shitty being happy is for art (comedians, too, say happiness is bad for business.) Falling in love is especially proble...

[livmammone]

Blues Song Draft: Baclofen Blues

Hey everybody! So last night, my friend Ed Romanoff--who is a genius and just a giving as fuq person--let me perform my very first song onstage with him at his gig at the Rockwood Music Hall. I sor...

Hey y’all

So I wrote a blues lyric which is REALLY new for me. You can read it on my wordpress.

[officialshira-blog]

Self as Garden

I resent the term “mental illness.” Why can’t we just call it an “illness”? I resent the idea that the brain is somehow not the body. Because personality/character is so inextricable from said “mental illnesses” we distinguish it as “mental.” Why? Is the lung physical, but the brain an island the waters of the body only border?

Perhaps it’s because we don’t want to see what “mental” illnesses point to: the tenuous nature of Self, the cocktail ecosystem that is the Brain, how one could be different at the flick of a major switch (Hello, Phineas Gage), the existential soul-questioning that comes along with seeing a Beloved become Stranger. It’s unsettling, to say the least. We want Self to be fixed & firm & confirmable.

But Self is an aurora borealis - a swirl of color & light, a charge & dispersal of energy. But Self is a garden - & the bees make the garden, as do the flowers, as do the birds, as do the clouds. There is no border to the garden’s body. It dwells in the caretaking hands of rainfall as much as ant footsteps. What if we - each - are this? A system? A party? An interrelating dance? This isn’t poetry. It’s chaos held close like a marble. I have simultaneously been the Beloved & the Stranger. I am sitting in the center of myself, wanting to know where I end, or begin.

[livmammone]

Wordgathering in an online journal of disability-related poetry, that seeks work from writers with and without disabilities. It also features comment, book reviews, essays and critiques of disability literature.

These great people have decided to publish FIVE of my poems. If you are a writer in any genre with any type of disability this is a mansion for your work to find a home to party in.