Hypermobilities

Hypermobilities is a verse-memoir in haiku, written over two years of intense engagement with the medical system. Samuels composed these poems in her head while strapped down within MRI machines, in the infusion center with IV needles snaking her arms, waiting and waiting in white-walled rooms. They are necessarily short, to be written by memory without pen or screen. A selection of these poems eventually formed into this collection, named after the hallmark sign of her genetic condition: joint hypermobility.Advance Praise: "A wondrous, nonlinear, potent proof of life, and Ellen Samuels has counted every syllable, composing in her mind. 'Draw a star/ where it hurts the most.' Each poem bursts and expands beyond its scale, moving you through a measured wormhole of body and life. 'I am the garden/ Eve never took back,' Samuels writes, 'Fist with-/in the bone, rising.' Grounded in a practice and form that began for the poet out of everyday necessity, Samuels applies pressure on language to create 'solid beings,' offering them to us now as HYPERMOBILITIES. I love this book." - Oliver Baez Bendorf, author of 'Advantages of Being Evergreen'