A Review of Liv Mammone's Fire in the Waiting Room

With a voice that is at once lyrical, intimate, and unapologetically confrontational, Liv Mammone explores the intersections of disability, queerness, and identity in her new book Fire in the Waiting Room (Game Over Books, 2025). This collection of poems challenges readers to confront society’s tendency to push disabled bodies to the margins by demanding that readers recognize the fullness of disabled lives, including their capacity for pleasure. Mammone disrupts cultural notions that people with disabilities are to be pitied by “the gorging eyes of onlookers” by reclaiming her body as a site of rage, desire, creativity, and defiance. Her wit often shines through, as in her poem “Vagina Resigning,” in which the speaker announces, “my vagina has put in for a transfer from my legs.” Mammone refuses to shy away from writing about pain, a central and constant presence in the collection, or desire, equally present throughout her work.

            Throughout the collection, Mammone explores the myriad ways disability impacts both the body and the mind. In “People Leave their Houses,” the speaker marvels at how some people “jump the front steps three at a time” and imagines herself as a woman who “is living in a six floor walk up,” who “goes out dancing” and “definitely runs.” In another poem, “First Dress,” the speaker praises the body, describing it as “an amber, breezing banner / of your own right to be alive,” one which walks “proud and crooked as a heron.” These varied and often conflicting descriptions of the self are reminders to the reader that all bodies hold the potential for a wide range of feelings, experiences, and encounters, regardless of the labels placed on them by others.

            Liv Mammone writes with clarity and a directness that sometimes feels accusatory–a demand that readers consider their own complicity in the cultural dynamics she exposes. At the same time, she uses lyricism and often surprising imagery to invite readers into her perspective. Her poems are equally committed to visibility and recognition over sympathy and comfort as she reminds those with disabled bodies that “So many people have called you inspiration / like it was your name, you forget / you can inspire yourself.” Overall, Fire in the Waiting Room is a complex, fierce, and unflinching collection that demands dignity and autonomy. It celebrates the resilience of living abundantly in an ableist society, asserting that disability is not a tragedy to overcome, but rather a fully realized way of inhabiting the world.

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Jackie Martin is an educator and writer from the Boston area. Her work has been published by Jabberwocky, New Pages, Heuer Publishing, Smith & Kraus, Applause Books, YouthPLAYS, and Pioneer Drama. Jackie is currently a graduate student pursuing her MA in English at Bridgewater State University. When she is not reading, writing, grading, or planning, she delights in spending time with her husband, two children, and cats.