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 woman with long, brown hair gazes at the camera. She is indoors and the background is blurred. She wears a blue jacket over a yellow sweater.

    The Language of Learning

    Most people assume that if you only know one language, that language was easy to learn. English and I still battle.

  • A woman with brown skin and long, brown hair gazes at the camera. She wears a pink shirt and a beaded black necklace.

    Misophonia

    It’s about mouth breathers, gum chewers, pen clickers, foot tappers

  • Melody Dover

    The Dance

    Years of tedious fighting with Pain I now tread the boundaries between

  • Vulture

    “Our love laid thick and bitter on my tongue/I choked it down as not to spit/I laughed so not to lunge.”

  • Last Call at the Cancer Café

    You said you weren’t an if but a when

  • A white woman with short, light brown hair smiles at the camera. She wears blue-rimmed glasses and a pink polo shirt.

    Straight

    Poet and retired physical therapist Barbara Brooks writes a poem about the S curve of her spine, the pain that comes with it, and the peace that comes with knowing there is nothing she can do to change it.

  • That time you pushed me in the wheelchair at the airport

    “you were so, so bad at it. Just terrible, hitting every everloving bump.”

  • A woman with brown skin and long, brown hair gazes at the camera. She wears a pink shirt and a beaded black necklace.

    Canary Cry

    “Pain sears my chest, radiates from an incision  fish-netted by seventeen stitches.”

  • A white woman with long, brown hair gazes at the camera. She is indoors and the background is blurred. She wears a blue jacket over a yellow sweater.

    Notes from the Panini that Never Ends

    For people like Caitlin Thomson and her family, a societal lack of COVID precautions is even more isolating than the early stages of the pandemic.

  • A white person with short, brown hair. They are smiling at the camera with their mouth closed. The background of the photo is brick.

    At The Top

    “When I question my upbringing,/my therapist draws a peak./Tells me all religions glimpse/different angles of the same structure.”