Category: Challenges

New Works–Words I Cannot Spell

a digital image created by Bill Hendricks
Bill Hendricks © 2020

“Disobey Me” is a poem by Sally Gardner. 

They told me I was dyslexic

it didn’t describe me
belonged in the library
of words I can’t spell|
no matter how many times they tell
you just try harder sound it out
simple when you think about
it. Stop giving me the third degree
don’t put me down
don’t make me fret
I can’t learn my alphabet
it doesn’t go in any logical order
the stress gives me attention deficit disorder
at school I wanted to go it alone
they told me that’s unwise
they called me unteachable 

The poem continues …. Disobey Me

Please visit the other images in the series, “Words I Cannot Spell” (words-that-i-cannot-spell-an-experience-of-a-dyslexic/)

The Drawing that Will not be Done

The drawing wants to draw what is invisible to the naked eye.It’s very difficult.The effort to write is always beyond my strength. What you see here, these lines, these strokes, are rungs on the ladder of writing, the steps which I have cut with my fingernails in my own wall, in order to hoist myself up above and beyond myself.

Cixous, Hélène, and Catherine A. F. MacGillivray. “Without End No State of Drawingness No, Rather: The Executioner\’s Taking Off.” New Literary History, vol. 24, no. 1, 1993, pp. 91–103. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/469272
Mixed Media Drawing by Bill Hendricks
Drawing Without End Hendricks © 2021, mixed-media, approx: 5″x 5″

This drawing lingers for me. Not wanting to call itself done. Yet, even when I call it finished, it calls me back. A friend asked me what I was doing a few times when he called from New York, and I told him, “I am working on a drawing, and it won’t end.” He asked me, “How do you know when it is done… Don’t you stop?”
Well, no. You don’t just stop. Some might say I should. I am moving on, but it sits on my desk. Done for the moment. 

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