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​Peace is too cheap to be a white dove by Partha Sarkar

30/1/2025

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Peace is too cheap to be a white dove. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Peace is too cheap to be a white dove. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
​‘We have come to the utmost position of the development.’-
The evening with the ruction. (May go far the camel without cactus.)
The owl looks at the watch and finds a watch dozing at the square
With rushing vehicles and advertisements
And then the come-hither in the moribund city.
(The city has been a rubber stamp of the robust canker.)
And gets tapped and trapped a lone womb in the seminar hall.
And after that gets glorified white fluid.. white fluid…white fluid.
Yet
Swims, no doubt, the vendetta in the slurred utterance.
Yet
The cruel significant of technology in the basement shows on its broken teeth.
And at the threshold cries the petal of a white rose.
(The morning is too obscure to identify the wrinkles of the bastard.)
‘And there will be no ending of the flow of dry corpses.’
Thinking so throws the last sign of cancer in the air Satan.
 
Is there no comeuppance since then?
 
Have you met any of it in the chained rendezvous? 

About the author:
Partha Sarkar, a resident of Ichapur, a small town of a province West Bengal Of India, is a graduate who writes poems inspired by the late Sankar Sarkar and his friends (especially Deb kumar Khan) to protest against the social injustice and crimes against nature. His poems have been in different magazines both in Bangla and in English. Once, he would believe in revolution but now he is confused because of the obscurity of human beings, though he keeps fire in soul despite.
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Stop. Just Fucking Stop. by Kristen McConville

16/1/2025

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Stop. Just Fucking Stop. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Stop. Just Fucking Stop. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
​I’m tired of all the prayers and the apologies
People who care tell me I need to stop
apologizing, but for once—-I am Not The One
Apologizing. Not apologizing for my existence, as
one of my close friends always tells me.
Stop apologizing for existing. But, how can I stop
when everyone seems to want to tell me that they are sorry for me?
I don’t want your prayers or your ‘fake apologies’, because
“the world doesn’t end, it just feels like it does.”
I don’t know who I’m supposed to be when everyone
keeps using their teacher pointer-finger to tell me that
something is wrong with my body.
My entire life, my own father asked me what was wrong with me,
but not because he cared. I stopped having an answer to give people
whenever they asked me this. When will people stop pointing their finger
At Me? I’m not a circus attraction, I’m a human being.
You’re sorry that this ‘happened’ to me? If someone else tells me this,
I will fucking flee! I’m tired of the fake sympathy and the fake apologies.
I’m tired of the unrealistic optimism—the unrealistic words that “maybe you will outgrow it.
Sometimes if you are diagnosed when you are younger,
you will outgrow it by the time you are old.” Just stop.
Just fucking stop. Just stop with the stares, the prayers, and the apologies.
I’ve expected the mourning of my own body, so why can’t you?
Why do you feel the need to heal me? I don’t want to be healed
and I didn’t ask for it. "But, does the world really end?
They say it just feels like it does. But, would I actually rather be me?"
Who is this version of me that everyone else sees? Who is she?

Quotations in italics taken from the song, ​"I'd Rather Be Me', from the Mean Girls Musical.
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Flight Feathers by Yasmeen Amro

26/12/2024

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Flight of Feathers. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Flight of Feathers. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
I’m 18 when I grow my flight feathers.
They itch and stem from my shoulder blades.
My mama rubs a towel onto my skin where the feathers have torn their way through me.
 I’m scared and shaking. I still don’t know why, don’t know how this is happening.
 
There’s a party for me. Mama cuts two slits in the back of my thobe. My thobe is a beautiful embroidered dress. I feel bad cutting it up.
We dance, all my female relatives, in thobes like mine, wings proudly jutting out from their backs.
My wings are small. There’s still room for them to grow. I spread them as much as I can, mimicking the way the other women move their wings.
We all dance with platters full of candles and flowers held on our heads. I take a platter and balance it the best I can with one hand while fan out my skirt with the other, bunching up the fabric.

Learning to fly is difficult, but I teach myself how to stay in the air pretty quickly.
When I fly, I imagine that everything below me belongs to me because I flew over it.
When I fly, I feel what little freedom I am afforded.
 
Flying is an exclusively female freedom. No men have grown wings.
I take great pride in my flight feathers. In the twin slits in the back of my thobe. In my wind-blown hair. Even the pain of molting. All the good and bad.
Wings are a rite of passage, and I have grown my flight feathers.

About the author: 
Yasmeen Amro is a neurodivergent author with publications in Fusion Fragment and State of Matter. She enjoys reading, writing, and baking. 
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Flight of Aphasia by Rochelle M. Anderson

19/12/2024

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Flight of Aphasia. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Flight of Aphasia. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
Flying towards the beautiful, distant horizon
the pilot, in charge, scrutinized the brain
focused on center of runway
 
Suddenly, the snow twirled and swirled
stroke causes plane to slide off the end of tarmac
what’s going to happen?
 
With grit and strength
determination rules
aphasia now controls the airspace
 
Landed in a foreign country
cannot speak or understand the language
new journey is ready to begin

About the author:
Rochelle M. Anderson lives in Minnesota, USA.   She is an attorney who had a severe stroke in 2007 and almost died. She is still disabled with difficulty walking; and because of aphasia struggles with reading and writing. Ms. Anderson has been published in four chapbooks and in an online poetry journal. Writing poetry has helped her recover; and dictation fuels her words.
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My Fairy Tale by Rochelle M. Anderson

12/12/2024

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: My Fairy Tale. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: My Fairy Tale. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
Forest, dark and scary.   Will I lose the
magic beans?   Animals speak,
ogres growl, and wolves disguised.
Fairy tales read to me as a child,
are remembered as an adult. 
 
My story begins with a black, pointed hat
and scraggly broom.  A witch suddenly
appears, casts a spell, and causes a stroke
that almost kills me.   Grey matter twisted,
and the enchantress short circuits my brain.
 
Aphasia is a serpent that stings,
an ordeal of shadows and contrasts.
My mind is filled with jumbled shapes,
nonsense words, and mixed-up colors.
Demons shout sinister curses.  Still cloudy,
but I see the sun start to peek through.

About the author:
Rochelle M. Anderson lives in Minnesota, USA.   She is an attorney who had a severe stroke in 2007 and almost died. She is still disabled with difficulty walking; and because of aphasia struggles with reading and writing. Ms. Anderson has been published in four chapbooks and in an online poetry journal. Writing poetry has helped her recover; and dictation fuels her words.
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A Dreary Path by Rochelle M. Anderson

5/12/2024

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: The Dreary Path. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: The Dreary Path. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
The woods are mysterious with trees
that mark the trail.  Branches tightly
packed, light wanes, and the moon provides
no illumination.    I am lost without
a map or compass.  Now nighttime,
hear a chorus of frightening sounds. 
Alone in a hedge labyrinth, unable to
find the exit.
 
Disability steals the rainbow, colors
grayed and dark.  I dream of life
before the stroke, when all I knew
about the brain was a green gelatin mold
for Halloween.  I wake up and the
nightmare returns.  Like Rumpelstiltskin,
I stomped my feet and disappeared down a chasm.
 
Will I ever leave my fairy-tale world?

About the author:
Rochelle M. Anderson lives in Minnesota, USA.   She is an attorney who had a severe stroke in 2007 and almost died. She is still disabled with difficulty walking; and because of aphasia struggles with reading and writing. Ms. Anderson has been published in four chapbooks and in an online poetry journal. Writing poetry has helped her recover; and dictation fuels her words.
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Jack by Anna Cates

28/11/2024

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Jack. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Jack. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
Wind batters
a tattered climber,
fingers stained bean green.
His mother always told him,
“Your head’s in the clouds!”

A kingdom in the sky!  
His heart thunders
with the lightning,
booming over the castle,
gleaming solid gold!

About the author:
Dr. Anna Cates teaches writing, literature, and education online and has published a variety of books (poetry, fiction, and drama) through www.cyberwit.net, prolificpress.com, redmoonpress.com, and wipfandstock.com.  Her full-length poetry collection, Love in the Time of Covid, won an Illumination Book Award.  She resides in Wilmington, Ohio with her two cats. 
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Beatriz & the Beast by Anna Cates

21/11/2024

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Beatrix & the Beast. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Beatrix & the Beast. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
He sailed across the sea, where there be dragons,
beneath a sea green moon, soldiering,
though muscle and might could not defeat
the magi’s hex he fought.

From fields swampy with blood, warlocks netted him,
bound him in a neon green wizard’s warp,
caged him in a nebulous fate.

The king’s daughters paced in their pink slippers
along the marble floor before him, tossing up their noses
and shielding cleavage in arrest.  They labeled him “The Beast!”

Bat-like wings sprang from his nut-brown back,
and rocky brows overhung his gleaming eyes.
But Beatriz, a chambermaid, didn’t see animal
in those onyx orbs but intelligence instead.

She brought him water, cheese, and bread.  
His biceps boomed with the lift of each bite,
his regard never abandoning her.

One day, as she handed him a flask of new wine,
turquoise eyes in a pearly face met his gaze,
and love carried her away like a hawk with a field rabbit.

The day before his scheduled execution, she fell
to her knees before the throne, dark braids to the floor,
hands knotted in plea, and begged the king:
Spare the Beast!  

After a day or two of pondering, like a falconer
setting free his falcon, the king bid his top mage:  
Release the prisoner!  Like a meteor exploding,
with sparkly magic, the lock burst.

The two wed—a beauty and a beast:
Oh, Beatriz!  Oh, Beast!
Breast to breast, their two hearts meshed.

About the author:
Dr. Anna Cates teaches writing, literature, and education online and has published a variety of books (poetry, fiction, and drama) through www.cyberwit.net, prolificpress.com, redmoonpress.com, and wipfandstock.com.  Her full-length poetry collection, Love in the Time of Covid, won an Illumination Book Award.  She resides in Wilmington, Ohio with her two cats. 
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Thesternes by Edward Cates and Anna Cates

14/11/2024

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Thesternes. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: Thesternes. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
Sundry dark souls sleep ‘neath elden loam
Tenebrous tendrils wind ‘round their bones
Spirits arise from under the benighted hills
At the pipers’ skillful and enchanting trills
Playing the haunted dances of eldritch fae  
As they gather together from glen and brae
Ambling down through moon-silvered dells
To dance the reels where the fae kings dwell
Whose brows are crested in woven starlight
Though their hearts are robed in midnight
But should you harken to that piping sweet
And in dreaming, venture where they meet
To find yourself amidst their merry halls
Pray the light dark charms forestall

100-year sleep
that purple planet
called dreams . . .
awaken me before
the thorns envelop me

​NOTE: Unitalicised text is the work of Edward Cates. Italicised text is the work of Anna Cates. ​

About the authors:
The late Edward Dana Cates (2/23/69-11/12/23) was a disabled househusband and writer/poet from Seymour, Indiana.  He attended George Fox University and served on Deviant Art’s literature committee, where he acquired many mutual fans and friends.  The original versions of his poems are fully illustrated a viewable at his online gallery: https://www.deviantart.com/barosus/gallery.

Dr. Anna Cates teaches writing, literature, and education online and has published a variety of books (poetry, fiction, and drama) through www.cyberwit.net, prolificpress.com, redmoonpress.com, and wipfandstock.com.  Her full-length poetry collection, Love in the Time of Covid, won an Illumination Book Award.  She resides in Wilmington, Ohio with her two cats. 
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The Mucus Highway by Samantha Carr

7/11/2024

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A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: The Mucus Highway. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: The Mucus Highway. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.
It started with pain between
the shoulder blades, like Nyx
had placed the eclipsed moon
inside, forever hidden.
 
A calcified cave – a coiled cloak
of darkness enfolded the softness
that remained of that body. I wore
it well, this forever home.
 
The pain dissolved into rain as the
storm coaxed clouds to empty.
I felt better then, filled with water,
forever heavy.
 
A delicious soft foot, I learned
to contract like lightning bolts,
relax like mulch. And moved faster
than I had forever.
 
My power oozed from my mouth,
sleek slimy stringy mucus, no
longer a cough burden. Fast comet
tail highways forever.
 
My shell expanded with calcified
excitement, the night and I foolish
friends, free in this shadow air,
forever healthy.


About the author
Samantha is based in Plymouth, UK where she is a PhD Creative Writing candidate at 
the University of Plymouth exploring chronic illness through poetry. Her poetry has been published in Arc, Acumen, Room, Cephalopress, The Storms Journal and Causley International. Samantha is an ex nurse who lives with complex chronic illness and neurodiversity.
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