Cheryl Marie Wade

Poet, performer and disability culture activist, 1948–2013

Cripple Lullaby

By Cheryl Marie Wade

I'm a trickster coyote in a gnarly-bone suit I'm a fate worse than death in shit-kickin' boots I'm the nightmare booga you flirt with in dreams 'Cause I emphatically demonstrate: It ain't what it seems I'm a whisper, I'm a heartbeat, I'm "that accident", and goodbye One thing I am not is a reason to die.

I'm homeless in the driveway of your manicured street I'm Evening Magazine's SuperCrip of the Week I'm the girl in the doorway with no illusions to spare I'm a kid dosed on chemo, so who said life is fair I'm a whisper, I'm a heartbeat, I'm "let's call it suicide", and a sigh One thing I am not is a reason to die.

I'm the poster child with doom-dripped eyes I'm the ancient remnant set adrift on ice I'm that Valley girl, you know, dying of thin I'm all that is left of the Cheshire Cat's grin I'm the Wheelchair Athlete, I'm every dead Baby Doe I'm Earth's last volcano, and I am ready to blow I'm a whisper, I'm a heartbeat, I'm a genocide survivor, and Why? One thing I am not is a reason to die.

I am not a reason to die.

About this poem

First published in Mouth magazine as “Cripple Lullabye”, and reprinted in Keystone (March/April 1997), p. 11, and in The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis (Routledge). The text here is from Keystone. Wade wrote it in response to a newspaper editorial arguing that some disabled people should be allowed to die, and it is sometimes known by its refrain, “Not a Reason to Die”. She opened Celebrating the Body Electric (1994) and Sassy Girl with it, and a shorter version is spoken in A Woman With Juice and in Finding Words (1995).

This poem also appears, sometimes in a different version, in: