Latif Askia Ba, The Choreic Period
Milkweed Editions, 2025
Review by Jonathan Fletcher
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“I put a period in the middle of your sentence. / I put a period in the middle of your sidewalk. / I put a period in the middle of your gaze.” And so begins Latif Askia Ba’s latest collection of poetry. More than a meditation or commentary on disability and being (not that there aren’t unambiguous moments of introspection and extrapolation), The Choreic Period is not so much a text but instead a radically unapologetic act. With (clearly intentionally) interruptive punctuation—most obviously, periods that fragment otherwise fluid lines and turn them staccato in tempo—the author, rather than grounding his reader, deliberately decenters and disorients them. In doing so, Ba refuses to accommodate and instead insists on his right to simply exist (however radical such an existential assertion). His intent is not only reclamatory but is also instructive. After all, in a world in which ableist structures and spaces continue to refuse to accommodate disabled bodies and communities, what better way to invert the power dynamics (if only literarily) by refusing to accommodate an able-bodied reader?
Though Ba takes pains to not hold the reader’s hand, he also doesn’t leave them without any signposts or frames of reference. Even at the author’s (arguably) most inaccessible points—code-switching between Spanish, French, Patois, Fulani, and Wolof—the author is there with the reader (as opposed to there for the reader). Such a crucial distinction only becomes clearer the further along the reader gets into The Choreic Period.
Throughout Ba’s poetry collection, inversions of power are established and asserted. In the second section of “Choreic,” for example (which essentially reads as a prose poem), the speaker, addresses an unidentified “you” (perhaps their own body?). The speaker then identifies their disability as cerebral palsy, only to then acknowledge the power of the term: “We bow now to the name”. Though primarily (and historically) associated with subservience or honor, the physical act of bowing also possibly reflects the presumably poor posture of the speaker (such posture probably owing to their palsy). In evoking such associations, the speaker not only implicitly critiques the still extant ableist power structures in society; they also (and quite effectively) bend the reader into the text itself. This allows for an uncomfortable reading, if not a physical discomfort for the able-bodied reader; hence, the reason why the use of the plural pronoun “we” in the line is so important.
In other poems within Ba’s collection, such power inversions are also evident, however achieved differently. For example, in the first piece titled “Syntax,” a tellingly titled free-verse poem comprised of five couplets, the speaker, addresses a caregiver (or, by extension, an able-bodied audience or society in general). The speaker then describes a disabled child and their physical limitations and consequent needs: “So the kid can walk. But not good. He can walk but only / at the ends of your fingers. He can walk but he leaks. You have to / change his bandanna after lunch”. A few things of note here: by providing instructions to the caregiver, the speaker flips the script on the relationship between them and the patient/client and the superior/subordinate roles implied therein (and respectively). This is only truer toward the end of the poem, where the speaker full on gives orders to the “you”: “Tell him to say it again. Open his snack. He can / feed himself. With his right hand. If it drops. Tell him to try again”.
The fact that the poem itself is in couplets lends credence to such an interpretation. Moreover, the title, “Syntax,” a term that refers to the arrangement and order of words and phrases, also argues for the idea of a rearrangement of the power dynamics between the speaker and the caregiver.
On the other hand, in the second piece entitled “Syntax” (a prose poem as opposed to a free-verse piece), traditional (and arguably ableist) power structures are also critiqued and inverted. Additionally, the voice of the speaker is just as unapologetic as that in the first piece titled “Syntax,” as well as the voice in “Choreic.” Like the first poem entitled “Syntax,” the speaker also relates the experience of a presumably disabled child: “It took him a while to eat last night. She told him he shouldn’t talk when he / eats. Just chew. He doesn’t think he’s chewing properly”. Though the second “Syntax” bears little resemblance in form to the first, the power dynamics are also flipped, and equally exciting moves are achieved on the level of line. For example, abruptly (technically inappropriately?) placed periods break otherwise fluid sentences into staccato lines (e.g., “He thinks. Things / are getting rather ambiguous and this reminds him to call Medicaid” and “On the other hand. Some / people don’t understand him and don’t ask anything which is just. As good as killing him”). Such lineal fragmentation not only reflects the dysarthric speech of the disabled figure in the piece but also makes the reader stumble through the lines, shaping their experience as one of discomfort. If only for the briefest of moments, the speaker gives uncomfortable form, making a presumably able-bodied reader feel what it is like to be in a position of subordination. Maybe that sounds like punishment. If it is, it’s also a refusal of the ableist status quo. It’s radical embodied existence. Even Ba’s poetic choice to not translate the non-English words and phrases (whether that be the sectioned months in French, the alternate spelling of the invocation of the Arabic honorific “Cheikh,” or the Wolof term for “place”) suggests as much. Like a polyglot, The Choreic Period communicates through different modes, exists in spaces that at times (and purposefully) prove inaccessible to a general audience. Of course, in the case of the sectioned months in French, the meaning can easily be gleaned from the context, not to mention the Arabic numerals that precede each month. However, in the case of the lines and phrases in Wolof, the meaning is often obscure, even with the English that bookends those bits of the Niger-Congolese language. That is not only intentional. It is not only instructional. It is artful. After all, what is more poetic than mystery? Ba employs it in spades.
If in search of a collection of poetry that settles or comforts you, then skip The Choreic Period. If, however, you are looking for a work that decenters and challenges you, all the while treating you to bits of Spanish, French, Patois, Fulani, and Wolof, then read Latif Askia Ba’s newest collection of poetry. Though he won’t coddle you, he will accompany you. Though he won’t pretend to make you understand what it’s like to live such an embodied existence as his, he will ask you to reexamine the ways in which you think, live, and even move. Through only sixty-six pages, meet Ba. Get to know him. Get to better know yourself. As good as Ba’s previous collection, The Machine Code of the Bleeding Moon, is (and it is), The Choreic Period is even better. It’s a revelatory, timely, and invaluable contribution to crip lit. Try to read it just once. Try to come away from it without the compulsion and motivation to change how you think, act, and talk. Just try.
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Latif Askia Ba is a poet with Choreic Cerebral Palsy, author of The Choreic Period (Milkweed Editions, 2025) and The Machine Code of a Bleeding Moon (Stillhouse Press, 2022).
Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests. A Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.
ID: Cover of The Choreic Period by Latif Askia Ba.
Psaltery & Lyre 