Spoken Word Saturday is a showcase of the amazing Spoken Word Poetry talent that can be found from coast to coast. You can find a playlist of all Spoken Word Saturday curations on the League’s Youtube channel!

Carla Harris

“The Seizure Poem”

Carla Harris (they/she) is a disabled queer writer, performer and interdisciplinary artist from Treaty 4 territory, living in Regina Saskatchewan. They’ve performed in Verses Festival (2016), the Saskatoon Poetic Arts Festival (2018), and the Lieutenant Governor’s Poetry Soirée (2022). Harris teaches workshops on creative improvisation and performance, and they’re working on a play and their first book of poetry in unconfined #CripTime.

Poem transcript

waiting at a stop, calling out XX XX X
XX XX X inaudible breaths
choke, in XX XX X
muffled XX listening x for that ring
ring XX ring around x the
sink that dries
conXxcen tra Xe
get Xx there…

I awaken amiss

after seizing, where
crisp cornered lips retch

the way sleepy eyes
crumble. but it’s harder
to brush the static speckle from
chewed cheeks, bruised tongue, the

clench that whips saliva, soft as
beaten egg whites, to c
rystallize like after-eyes, the

cluttered lace that
shatters softly when a thread is pulled,
the snag that intercepts awareness.

Delicate as strands of newsprint ash
afloat after flaring. the

synapses of my strain grow unfelt, unheard

as are my words and my motions that
gust like violent wind

I only see my illness
reflected in eyes of
each observer
after the
body’s thrashing, when

unsanctioned pain
hasn’t yet set in.

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