Review of Marlena Chertock’s Crumb-Sized (Unnamed Press, 2017)

Crumb-Sized is a book of paradoxes. Marlena Chertock weaves a complex tapestry, illness informed by culture and gender, sexual orientation and embodiment. Her description of disability is rooted in imagery of the natural world, but in its simplicity and relatability is accessible to the reader. Crumb-Sized is not weighed down by diagnoses or medical terminology; we never discover the full extent of the author’s illnesses. Chertock merely invites us into her experience, and once we’ve gotten a taste, she pushes us under, lets the rushing waves take us in. Through this—the power of poetry—we develop empathy.

Chertock starts with deformities of the body and the pain that comes from them. “I’m beneath your stated height / restrictions,” she says in “Application to NASA.” “I’ve been staring up since I / was born — / at people and the stars.” Here we see the angst of societal expectations, Chertock’s inability to blend with an abled world. She stands out. She is different, and with that difference comes pain of another nature, another breed.

Chertock invites us to see the world through her eyes. In “Rikkud,” we move beyond the body to the author’s social world: “I’m a part of the circle, hands clasped, / more Jewish in this two hours of folk / dancing every Friday night in the summer / than in a synagogue.” She speaks of moths, bats, courts lit in amber—a life without illness. In “Tin·ni·tus,” Chertock alternates between first and second person, drawing on personal anecdote and universal experience to explain what is ultimately phenomenological. “Only you can hear the sounds,” she says, and suddenly, we do. We can no longer deny the hermit crab eardrum of us, creeping inside its shell, desperate to avoid the ringing, the buzzing, the high-pitched screech.

In the chapbook’s titular poem, Chertock introduces us to the psychological narrative of illness: “A boy called the girl smaller than a crumb. / She called him fat / and was told to sit alone during lunch.” We see, briefly, the weight of illness, the tiny ripples of disability in the pond of the author’s life. But then we return, to kindling bones and bonfires. We witness yet another paradox: Chertock is part of the circle from “Rikkud,” and yet she remains at a distance. She is in the world, but she is simultaneously apart from it, separate, othered in a variety of ways. She watches the others dance, “[their] bodies so fluid / filled with bones their age.”

“1 to 10” speaks to the critical paradox of Crumb-Sized, that in witnessing what we cannot experience we come, somehow, to a place of empathy. How do you put pain into words? The answer, of course, is that you can’t. There is no number on the pain scale for Chertock’s life, the ache of embodiment and isolation, the joy of seeing the world through an abnormal lens. (“I’ve been staring up since I was born,” Chertock says, “at people and the stars.”) Is it any wonder that she distills the world to its essence, to moths and bats and courts lit in amber? These details are the texture of Chertock’s world, alien to everyone but her. “They ask me to rate my pain / in cold, hard numbers. Easy for the doctors / to comprehend, but what’s the difference, / really, between a 5 and a 6?” The difference is texture, moths and bats and courts lit in amber, unknowable to those who haven’t experienced it.

To understand Chertock’s pain, to locate its number on a scale, we must live with it. “You have to / bundle into yourself / and get swallowed whole,” she says, invoking the gravity of a black hole. “Linger / every day for years, or bloom // like a cavity in my hips, my bones / heavy as anvils, grinding together. / Then leave me slowly, without a note, / no 1 to 10 sliding scale metaphor for how it feels / when your fangs re-pierce my skin.” Thus, we cannot hope to understand. We cannot experience what it is to be crumb-sized. All we can do, like Chertock in the circle, watching the bodies dance, is bear witness to it, the tomato plants and ice cubes of the author’s life. The hope of Crumb-Sized is that, in doing so, we will bridge the gap between Chertock and the world, bring the author from separateness—from disability as a function of stigma—to a place of shared humanity.

There is a monstrosity to Chertock’s pain, but there is also beauty. There is strength and power, that of a supergiant, morphing to a supernova. This is yet another paradox: “Even when sneezing feels like I’ll push / my spine out of alignment, // still I’m strong. I may be one of the strongest / candidates you’ve ever had.” We return to the phenomenological, Chertock in a circle, watching bodies at a distance. She is separate, yes. She is different from the other NASA candidates. But those differences might just be a source of power: “She was the only one who could fit through / the bars and sit on top, watch the other kids / run and tag, pumping their longer, faster, sturdier legs.”

Chertock’s life is one of looking up. Perhaps she is drawn to outer space because she feels a kinship with the stars—a fixture of the night sky, but just as divorced from humanity, separate from the chaos of life on Earth. Personal anecdote. The phenomenological. Chertock on the monkey bars, sitting alone at lunch. Chertock, brittle, with bones that are older than her. Each poem is a star, a pinprick of light, distant but familiar, resonating at the same frequency as the author’s paradox.

Pain, like gravity, leads to supernovas, black holes and white dwarfs. As Chertock notes, “Your blood is still / made up of iron from ancient stars.” Something as monstrous as illness, as the void of space, can flower into something breathtaking. That is the crux of Crumb-Sized. Indeed, perhaps that is why Chertock writes: not to untangle the paradox, but to make the tangle known, to map the chaos of the night sky and turn it into something human.

 [A white woman in a wheelchair smiles at the camera. She is wearing a velvet blue dress, and her shoulder-length, blonde hair is done up in curls.]

Brianna Albers is a content creator living in Minneapolis-St. Paul. In 2016, she founded Monstering, a magazine for disabled women and nonbinary people; in 2017, she co-founded ZRIE, a private new media collective. She is also on staff at SMA News Today and writes the column “The Wolf Finally Frees Itself.” A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her work can be found in Gravel, Shakespeare and Punk, and Fanzine, among others. Find her online at briehalbers.me and on social media @briehalbers.