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The Missouri Review

Poem of the Week | July 08, 2024

“We Do Not Enter the Gallery” by Rob Macaisa Colgate

“We Do Not Enter the Gallery” by Rob Macaisa Colgate

“We Do Not Enter the Gallery” by Rob Macaisa Colgate is our Poem of the Week.

Rob Macaisa Colgate (he/she/they) is the author of the poetry collection Hardly Creatures (Tin House, 2025) and the verse drama My Love is Water (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2025). Find him at robmacaisacolgate.com.

 

We Do Not Enter the Gallery

Which means the docent does not look confused when my friends and I ask about accessibility. Heather does not fail to find instructions on touching the art. Alex does not notice the digital ASL tour is only available for certain artworks. Elaine does not struggle to read the didactic panel hung too high above her chair. The panel does not claim there is no story behind the French artist who spent the latter half of his life sculpting the same bronze figure over and over. I do not start thinking about those life tasks I am stuck doing over and over, do not think about curating three meals or setting tomorrow’s alarm or scheduling another appointment and paying for it. I do not grow confused at which tasks I enjoy and which tasks I abhor, which make me happy to be alive and happy to be dying. I do not walk in circles fluttering my hands as this happens. I do not snap painfully back into my body after zoning out, do not feel bad that I am wasting my time in this gallery that I paid money to enter. Leaving early, I do not begin to wonder what it might look like if my friends and I built a gallery of our own. I do not begin to wonder what it would feel like to belong. I do not fail to convince myself to call Gabbie or Jody or Kurt when I start having a psychotic episode alone in the crowded subway station even though they have told me every day since I have know them that I can call any of them for anything literally anything this is not anything none of this happens none of this happens I do not stumble up and down the long hall of the train the long haul of training to live like this I do not somehow make it to my apartment I do not turn on the light I do not find a great emptiness waiting I do not shut my eyes at the sight

 

Author’s Note

This poem opens my forthcoming collection, which takes the form of an accessible art gallery. Individual poems stand in for sensory rooms, audio descriptions, tactile artworks; this poem is the entryway itself. Its negative structure was inspired by a performance by the artist Laura Fisher at the Rhubarb Festival in Toronto. In disability, we are so often characterized by our lack. What happens when we lead with what we do not have, when we center absence as a way of moving towards truth? Particularly after visiting the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where I encountered the didactic panel mentioned in the poem, I became curious about what narratives go unnoticed when we misconstrue absence as a deficiency of character.

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