We are about to host our first in-person event at the gallery
in three years. Sam, Sachin, and I spend two hours trying
the owl-shaped camera that will track whoever is the speaker
and spotlight them on the synchronous livestream event.
Rumi and Jessie are over in the corner of the office figuring out
what food to order. After a bit, they settle on sushi.
But I’m vegan, Alice has a feeding tube, Kevin can’t lift sushi,
Alex is severely allergic to soy (can’t even be in the gallery),
and then we need a side of fries just in case Leah comes out
since she has ARFID—it’s all possible, just takes a bit of trying.
Then, when we are prescreening the films before the event,
we realize we need content warnings. I lean against the big speaker
At Tangled
Rob Colgate
Rob Colgate (he/she/they) is a disabled, bakla, Filipino-American poet from Evanston, Illinois. He holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin, edits for POETRY magazine as a reader, and is poet-in-residence at Tangled Art + Disability.