Sight Screen

Illustration by Annabelle Walsh.

Before binary, digitus was a finger, toe.
Who can touch ones and zeroes?
Fingertips press, flesh flattens on
smooth unyielding images
stopped at the surface
below the sight screen of 
blindness.

Corduroy hums, 
a son’s pants screech, 
puffy jackets swish in tune.
Sonic resonance is stamped 
on the ground, and sound waves flick 
as hems swirl.

Colours come in textural shades, a
haptic guide to wardrobe
choices, where black dye reeks 
with pungent stubbornness. 
Perfumed strangers brush by
with scented contagion.

Pleats slice the air, frayed edges tease.
There is chaos in the weave, 
imprinted into flesh, leaving ridges 
of material echoes in place, 
embodied, in movement.

--

This poem draws from the sensory experience of Miles, a participant in my doctoral research on the sensory experience of fashion for people with vision impairments. Miles has been blind since he was a child. When we discussed digital fashion and online shopping, he said, “I feel so threatened by all this online stuff. That’s for able-bods. If I feel a jumper and it feels too synthetic, I’m just not going to be able to put it on, I’m just not going to be able to wear it.” Miles found immense pleasure in the sensory complexity of fashion. He evocatively described his sensory experience, including the horror of smelling black dye and the unruly feeling of frayed edges. In many ways, he actively refused to conform to the “sighted world,” living in a world where the poetry of fashion occurs through touch, sound, and smell. In this digital issue, it is a perspective worth including.