Beauty Is a Verb (Paperback) product details page

"We share roots, and many stories, but our different twang, our own breath animates these stories, making them sing as they are compressed against our specific bodies. 'Going home'151;who does not long for connection, location, a place? I want foreigners to see how our country lies and find familiar living tales, sung with a different melody."151;Petra Kuppers

From "Beauty and Variations" by Kenny Fries:

How else can I quench this thirst? My lips
travel down your spine, drink the smoothness

of your skin. I am searching for the core:
What is beautiful? Who decides? Can the laws

of nature be defied? Your body tells me: come
close. But beauty distances even as it draws

me near. What does my body want from yours?
My twisted legs around your neck. You bend

me back. Even though you can't give the bones
at birth I wasn't given, I let you deep inside.

You give me151;what? Peeling back my skin, you
expose my missing bones. And my heart, long

before you came, just as broken. I don't know who
to blame. So each night, naked on the bed, my body

doesn't want repair, but longs for innocence. If
innocent, despite the flaws I wear, I am beautiful.

Sheila Black is a poet and children's book writer.

Disability activist Jennifer Bartlett is a poet and critic with roots in the Language school.

Michael Northen is a poet and the editor of Wordgathering: A Journal of Poetics and Disability.