The Malingerer Goes To the Movies by Scott Norman Rosenthal

“The Malingerer Goes to the Movies,”
(a Dis-Ability Coming-Out poem,
for Colin Kempner, and Judith Wright)

1.
You’re sitting there,
and it’s getting harder to breathe.
It feels as if a little man, like a gnome,
has crept up the back of your seat,
and dropped a net into your head,
over your brain…

You glance at the woman sitting next to you,
and she isn’t there…
You look at the screen, and it seems unreal,
like a bad film…

Are you in a theater at all?
Are you in a room filled with water?
ARE THERE ANY PEOPLE HERE!?

2.
Show’s over, you’re out in the parking lot,
wondering how to get home…

(Scott Norman Rosenthal, Autumn ’82)

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This poem was the first attempt to record the bizarre symptomatology of my debilitating neuro-metabolic imbalance.

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