KNEE BRACE PRESS

A place for stories about chronic illness, disability, mental health, and neurodivergence.

Poetry

Submit your poem to Knee Brace Press! We welcome new voices and veteran poets alike.

Guidelines

All submissions must relate to chronic illness, disability, mental health and/or neurodivergence in some way. What that means is pretty much up to you. If you think your piece covers any of these topics, send it out way!

Our poems

  • A white nonbinary person with short, brown hair wearing a gray sweater. They smile with their mouth closed and have a nose piercing.

    To Mend Infinity

    In To Mend Infinity, poet Kate Matesic shares their experience of losing abilities as their chronic illness changes and progresses.

  • Melody Dover

    Happy Motherless Day

    No longer a phone call, hug or visit I feel a hollow in my heart

  • A white woman with short, white hair sits on a black couch with two small dogs in her lap. She wears a tank top with a leaf pattern and turquoise pants.

    Darkness Visiting

    In her newest poem, Knee Brace veteran Diane Funston writes about arthritis, family, and the darkest time of year.

  • General purpose assessment

    1. Are you more or less tired now than you were before starting this questionnaire?

  • Pilate Grimm

    Coping Mechanisms

    I bled like ink through paper Painted over watercolour Every season, same reason Leaving phantoms, pink fusion

  • The photo is in black and white and depicts a white person with long, dark hair smiling to the right of the shot.

    Tipping Point

    What if I did not know my shadowed self was yet alive?

  • A white person with short, light brown hair and black, rectangular glasses smiles with their mouth closed. They wear a black T-shirt. The background is cream colored.

    Hostile Architecture

    In their first poem for Knee Brace Press, Taylor Kovach writes about self-hatred and passive ideation.

  • Pilate Grimm

    Waves

    You were a girl on Venus Held my hand through the hallway, then the exit of our School, then to the Venue with our dresses I said, “But I’m promised to a Man down on Earth,” Then I knew.

  • HPA axis dysfunction

    My rabbit heart is in your hands, warm and pulsing, living, skittish.

  • Emergent Self

    But like the sun, there is Something elevating About the depression Some perspective above.