Embodied Ekphrasis: A Look at “Postural Tachycardia Syndrome” by Ronnie K. Stephens
There is no single way to navigate chronic illness, and Ronnie K. Stephens reflects this reality by offering multiple ways to experience his poem, “Postural Tachycardia Syndrome.” This poem behaves like illness, so that someone who doesn’t know POTS can get a sense of how it feels, and someone familiar with the condition can recognize the physiological logic beneath the poet’s choice of form and syntax.
Being sick is a multifaceted journey–when our bodies don’t respond or behave as we expect, the disconnect between our will and physiology can be devastating. Stephens’ choice to use visual fragmentation fused with the lived experience of POTS doesn’t feel forced or gimmicky, instead it recreates a body’s shifting instability through dual reading paths. One way to read it is linearly, as a cascading, almost breathless narrative:
“when the news comes it comes like a universe
breaking, a wall split open spiral galaxies & star systems
at the center of her life alight with violet & cobalt…”
This bewildering clinical-meets-cosmic atmosphere juxtaposes bodily breakdown with surreal expansion into the universe. The syntax and form mirror a condition of derealization and loss of control as “the curtain of what was” vanishes, and the speaker must attempt to create a coherent account of a diagnosis framed as a cataclysmic rupture, both internal and external.
But the poem also invites a vertical reading, where fragments stack into image clusters:
“the curtain of what was
refusing its call—she sits
flytraps snapping at her
& skulls like little deaths
that insist on their place
in the drawing of the scene
that darkens around her”
This version introduces intrusive images that work to make an invisible condition more tangible. The “flytraps” snap without mercy, conveying a sense of being caught or consumed by symptoms that can’t be controlled. The “skulls” carry a quiet violence–not invoking literal death, but “little deaths" of ongoing losses when it comes to deteriorating health.
Where traditional ekphrasis tends to keep some distance between artwork, viewer, and speaker, Stephens collapses that space. There’s no clear evidence that Desarae Lee’s piece “Forgone Conclusion” is about POTS, but her work is described as being shaped by experience with autonomic disorders and personal trauma. The poem doesn’t ‘interpret’ Lee’s work, it absorbs and reshapes it–translating an intricate, fragmented pen-and-ink drawing into a linguistic sensory experience. The poem stages a powerful convergence of visual and bodily suffering, a brilliant collaboration of crafts, as it dissolves the boundary between image and language until poem and artwork somehow manage to stand alone and blend simultaneously.
It is clear that the experience of chronic illness exceeds the limits of any one narrative. No single form can hold “that was—that is—that will not,” and the speaker is wise to remain within that unstable space. Stephens does not simply write about illness—he writes through it, allowing the poem to pulse, falter, and reassemble in response to a condition that is relentless, consuming, and ever-present.
