Author: Dana Henry Martin

Ableist Culture, Go Fuck Yourself

Folks with mental-health issues are encouraged to create emergency plans for when things go wrong, but scant attention is given to wellness plans that prevent things from going wrong in the first place. To make matters worse, emergency plans are behavior-driven, when we should instead focus on the dozens of easily trackable biomarkers that indicate the presence or absence of metabolic/circadian homeostasis and that precede behavioral issues by days if not weeks.

Why don’t we do that? Because those with mental health issues are routinely dehumanized, discriminated against, abused, maligned, written off, and seen as incapable of attaining health, wellness, and happiness. The system doesn’t even try to help us be fully human and to live full, productive, creative, enriching lives.

We aren’t as far away from locked rooms, back wards, lobotomies, electric shock, insulin shock, and chemical lobotomies as we think. The medical establishment still treats us like that’s where we belong and that’s what we deserve. (And in the case of electroconvulsive therapy and chemical lobotomies, they’re still happening, just not as barbarically, one could argue.)

So when I resigned from my role at the University of Arizona and passed a vehicle on my way out with a bumper sticker that read Ask Me About My Lobotomy, I was understandably livid. That sticker encapsulates all the sanist* comments I heard while working at UA, from library customers being called meth heads and trash humans to the word crazy routinely being used to describe people and situations to the phrase homeless people being used with derision.

Fuck all of that. UA culture, go fuck yourself.

—

* Sanism is a subset of ableism, so these are more examples of the ableism I witnessed or that was directed at me while employed at UA.

Yesterday, I was discriminated against when I disclosed my dyslexia—a documented, ADA-protected disability—to my coworkers. I’d been struggling all day to do my work but was unable to do so because of a modifiable issue in my immediate workspace. The employee I share a cubicle with was gathering with others. They were engaging in loud, boisterous conversations, including those that did not pertain to her work or to work at all. This went on for hours.

Eventually, when I was trying to send an email but was unable to accurately type a single sentence because of the noise and distraction in my immediate vicinity, I decided to share my diagnosis with the folks who were gathered in my space. I thought explaining how noise affects my ability to read and write would help them understand and be supportive. Instead, I was met with dismissiveness, sarcasm, and a refusal to be supportive. When I said, “I’m dyslexic,” one employee threw a hand in the air and sarcastically replied “Congratulations?” then staring me down as if I’d done something inappropriate. It was the equivalent of saying something akin to, What do you want, a medal?

I can’t imagine anyone responding that way if another documented, ADA-protected disability had been disclosed, such as a physical disability for which someone was requesting a ramp when only stairs had been provided. The response was unfathomable and unacceptable. I realized then that I will never be able to advocate for myself in that workplace or to feel a sense of safety, inclusion, and belonging there.

Immediately after this incident, I attended a one-on-one training that was not accessible. When I disclosed my disability to the instructor:

1. did not treat it as a disability,

2. made comments that were not acceptable and would never have been made if it were a different type of disability,

3. continued the training despite my having explained why it wasn’t working for me without modification to the way it was taught and what was being asked of me.

One comment the trainer made when I told him I needed my own keyboard and mouse—which are assistive technologies for me—if he wanted me to do extensive typing as part of the training, was that “everybody” has trouble with that keyboard and mouse. Even after I was clear that dyslexia is a disability, that it’s protected under the ADA, and that it’s not the same situation others without a learning disability may have with the keyboard, he continued to make that statement. It was minimizing, dismissive, and uninformed.

Again, if this were another form of disability, that would not have happened. His approach was no different from telling someone in a wheelchair who can’t use the stairs that everybody has issues with the stairs, then continuing to expect the employee to scale the stairs somehow without any other alternative.

I cannot take on the responsibility that job requires within a culture that is discriminatory in general and toward me in particular. Even with an accommodation request, which I’ve never had to make before in my career, the culture will not change quickly enough for this to be a tenable workplace.

I will not continue to subject myself to comments like the ones those employees made, and I shouldn’t have to. I invested a great deal in this position financially, emotionally, and otherwise. I turned down one offer and terminated the interview process with another potential employer to be at UA. I’m not going to be able to see my brother-in-law before he dies because I needed to be present at work. I started work two days after being in the emergency room for a serious, chronic medical condition that’s affecting my heart. I did all of that because I thought UA and UA Libraries lived their mission and would be safe places where I could learn, work, grow, thrive, and give back in spades to AIS, UA Libraries, and the University of Arizona as a whole.

In addition to the issues I’ve recounted above, employees use ableist, sanist, and otherwise dehumanizing language regularly. I was subjected to instances of discriminatory language, behavior, and attitudes multiple times a day. As someone who was supposed to be helping to shape the culture there and ensure the library is a trauma-informed space and community, I didn’t have the ability to effect change because I wasn’t empowered to do so. That was clear from day one. I was literally told by a high-level leader to just keep taking notes about what was happening. That’s right. Discrimination is occurring. Ableism and sanism are occurring. But all I could do was take notes that I kept to myself. Until when. When would something be done?

The reality is that I am a queer, female, trauma survivor who thrives despite having multiple disabilities. Only some of my identities and statuses are currently being protected at UA Libraries. This queer-positive environment is sorely lacking in inclusion in other areas. It’s always the disabled, the disenfranchised, and poor, the silenced, the struggling, and the utterly destroyed among us who continue to be harmed by people’s dogged adherence to bigotry, as if it has to be funneled somewhere rather than being eradicated entirely.

Can’t be racist anymore? Be ableist or sanist! Can’t be sexist anymore? Be ableist or sanist! Can’t be transphobic anymore? Well, it’s your lucky day. We’ve got some fancy schmancy ableism and sanism right here for the taking!!! Step right up! We’re running a two-for-one sanism sale! Buy one ableism, get a sanism for free!

But here’s the thing: Where we discriminate against one, we discriminate against all. Since this country was founded, ableism and sanism have been part of its fabric. And now, they appear to exist in order for bigots to express their generalized bigotry in the only way that’s currently palatable, which is by attacking human beings based on their disabilities.

Ableism and sanism affect the most vulnerable folks in our communities. We need to do better by them. All of us. And that includes the people working in our academic libraries.

I expected equal protection across statuses, but ableism and sanism appear to be endemic at UA Libraries. It’s unfortunate. It’s actually devastating.

Some acts of bravery require resignation. My act of bravery this morning was to resign.

P.S. On my way out yesterday, I saw the bumper sticker on an employee’s car. It read, Ask me about my lobotomy. Fuck that noise.

Dark Water

Content warning: This content contains content.

This morning, a woman at Fry’s stopped me to ask for help finding food for her husband, who’s preparing for chemotherapy treatment. She described the kinds of things his doctor said he should have. We walked and talked and found some good options for him.

It’s easier to remember being young than it is to imagine growing old.

Eight years ago, I thought we were post-narrative, post-storytelling. Now, I fear we’re post-community.

The problem is poetry isn’t part of our daily discourse. I’m serious.

Write the poem you want to see in the world.

The birds are acting strange today. The humans, too. And the dogs.

I’m the dark water, but I’m also the buoy cast into the dark water.

Again, I’ve dressed for the wrong desert.

I like having two houses. If I die, my dog will think I’ve just gone to the other house and she’ll see me soon. I’ll be away, not gone.

Weird

I’m disappointed that Kamala Harris and those who support her are using the word weird to describe Donald Trump and JD Vance. Why? Because it’s ableist, normative language that’s long been deployed against folks who are different in any way, especially young people who are neurodivergent, who have values that differ from their peers, or who don’t fit neatly into the ready-made boxes that are used to define and limit them.

I turned off an NPR interview earlier today because the person being interviewed kept saying JD Vance was weird each time the interviewer asked legitimate questions about his positions and statements over the years, including inquiries about his sexism and racism. There was so much more to say than labeling him as weird and shutting the conversation down.

We have critical issues to discuss that can’t be captured by the word weird, and making it part of an attack line at once diminishes the issues at hand and encourages voters, especially younger voters, to call anyone they don’t like weird, which isn’t progress and doesn’t encourage people to avoid using language that dehumanizes and others their fellow human beings.

Here

Where are your friends?
Dead and buried.

Where are your friends?
Dead and buried.

Where are your friends?
Dead and buried.

Do you ever see them?
Every day in every sunrise, every songbird, every sand, every silt.

Where are your friends?
Here and here.

Where are your friends?
Here and here.

Where are your friends?
Here and here.

Where are you now?
In the light, in the bird, in the sand, in the silt.

New Doves

Two mourning doves just landed on my porch light. They have the adorable, bewildered look of fledglings. Hello, Rosencrantz! Hello, Guildenstern! I don’t think they know what to do next. Where to go? What to eat? When to rest?

Oopsie, Rosencrantz almost slipped off the light. And poor Guildenstern is trying to eat stucco. Now they’re preening. Now they’re looking up down updown downup down down down down.

This is the world, little birds. I hope you like your time here. I’m sorry the Earth is in such shabby condition. There’s water two doors down. There’s food pretty much everywhere because much of this land is still wild. Stay cool. Live smart. Watch out for the Cooper’s hawks.

Post-Monsoon Bloom

I have a Mojave Desert wardrobe, but I’m a Sonoran Desert dweller now.

I need to be more columnar cactus, less Joshua tree. More legume tree, less pinyon-juniper.

More post-monsoon bloom of annual flowers, less monotony of Mormon tea.

More thornscrub, more upland, more plains. Less ecotone, less basin, less mountain.

More swelling tropical air, less strained, stolen aquifer water.

More desert, less golf course, less water park, less carwash.

More diversity, equity, and inclusion, less banning of diversity, equity, and inclusion.*

I don’t want to walk around like that old desert, its desiccated husk wrapped around my body, though the desert’s not to blame. No desert is ever to blame. As Samuel Green writes in his poem “Convenant: Saying Hello to the Land We Will Love”:

              We have only
              the compass of how we walk here
              how our feet move
              over the soil that will feed us.

Let us feed our lands, not feed on them. Here in the Sonoran Desert. There in the Mojave Desert.

Let the lands guide us. Let us honor them. Let us save them and in turn be saved by them. Let us not always destroy everything and everywhere and everyone.

Give me that wardrobe. I’ll suit up.

—

* Utah recently banned diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on campuses and in government.

Dalexina

My husband is more than halfway back to our house in Utah, where he’ll stay for at least a month before returning to Tucson. Since he left this morning, I’ve made social plans for next week, cleaned and organized the house, written a prose poem, worked a small puzzle depicting Zion National Park, and made nectar so I can feed the local hummingbirds.

It’s important for writers to have time alone. It’s important for everyone to have time alone, but writers need it to produce work, which is what we’re compelled to do during our time on Earth. Have you ever been around a writer who’s not writing? Probably not for long. We’re intolerable.

My husband and I love each other and also need time away from each other. That’s been impossible since the pandemic, which is when his company went remote and there was no workplace for him to go to anymore. I was largely doing freelance and remote volunteer work, so I was also home most of the time.

From late 2019 onward, we’ve been one thing, a single entity. I have the antique typesetting letters to prove it. They sit on our kitchen shelf declaring that we are either Dajonna or Jodanna, not Dana and Jon or Jon and Dana.

For the next month, we will be Jon and Dana. I may eventually become one-half of the entity known as Dalexina, since Lexi is staying here with me. That’s fine. Lexi sleeps most of the day and doesn’t interfere with my thoughts and feelings, both of which need to be unfettered when I write. I might even get in on some of those naps. Dalexina has been busy lately. She’s accomplished a lot. She has big plans. She may be a tad bit overextended. Dalexina needs to curl up in her favorite bed with her favorite blanket and get some rest with her better half.

Did I just call my dog my better half? So be it.

Toads

Dozens of spadefoot and Sonoran toads died in my area after the monsoon rains last night. They’d come out onto Old Spanish Trail, which has a speed limit of 50 miles per hour in most places and is becoming more heavily traveled as dense developments transform the area.

Fifty miles is way too fast, in my opinion. There’s too much wildlife out here to be tearing through the area at top speed. A fox crossed the road when we set out yesterday evening. Fortunately, we and other drivers stopped, and the fox passed safely.

But the toads were a different story. It was dark as we made our way home, which is the least safe time to be driving. It’s when wildlife is especially active and much less visible.

We shouldn’t have been out at all. I don’t like driving at night because of the danger it poses. I should say the danger I pose when driving in the dark. We had an errand we couldn’t do earlier in the day, so we made an exception.

Other drivers either weren’t aware of the toads or didn’t care about avoiding them. Or maybe they simply couldn’t react in time, especially when driving so fast. To be fair, there were a lot of toads on the road. It reminded me of summer nights in Oklahoma down by the Canadian River when I was a teenager. Hundreds of toads would gather on the gravel road next to the river. You couldn’t even move your car if you stayed too late, unless you didn’t care about killing them.

I’m having several dozen funerals in my heart today thinking about those toads whose last act was coming out to enjoy the rain.

Intellectual Surplus

Poets, may I rise from the beautiful destruction of your work. May I live another life, another day, through your poems. Grant me the strength to be burned clean and fly like that fierce mythical bird or even to outlive ten phoenixes like one of the Nymphs—all because of your writing. May we rise through and because of each other. May that be our eternity.

I just clocked fifty-nine active zone minutes on Fitbit getting IKEA items out of their packaging.

A bobcat just walked by our house.

Now I know what my monsoon-season hair looks like. Not good.

I’m dressed like a flower so the bee who made his way into our home yesterday will land on me and I can walk him outside. I made nectar for him last night and placed it in a shallow dish. His name is Tucson but we call him Tuckie for short.

Don’t thank me for helping you grow if you grew at my expense.

There is no border in the heart.

I’ve got a lot going on here in Southern Arizona for a person who was intellectual surplus in Southern Utah.

I was desperate to exist in Southern Utah and am relieved that my existence is a given in Southern Arizona.

Tell me where you live without telling me where you live: I wake at 5 a.m. to be active while avoiding the heat, have a favorite saguaro that I photograph regularly, and nurture a love/hate relationship with javalinas.

I just received a box containing a box containing boxes.

Love: Why do I feel so heavy?

Me: Because you’re carrying me.

The longer we live, the longer we live in the past.

You won’t save the land. (You must try to save the land.) You won’t save the animals. (You must try to save the animals.) You won’t save humans. (You must try to save humans.) Who is speaking? (And to whom?) My trauma to me. (Me to my trauma.) Me to myself. (My trauma to my trauma.)

I was of the lands in Southern Oklahoma. I’ve been in all the other lands where I’ve lived, not of them. I could be of Southern Arizona someday — if I stay long enough, if I live long enough. I want to be of lands again. It’s been too long. It’s been decades.

My dog and I eat spinach together on the anniversary of my last dog’s death.