How to Find the Center of a Circle
"Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.”
—Countee Cullen, “Incident”
That's all that I remember.”
—Countee Cullen, “Incident”
|
(x)2 The first time
with those molten syllables at a skating rink spun around me I didn't know but my body Ugly as two white boys they curved a little girl felt How I told the teacher But what about with the red in her ears? you are branded by Tiana Clark |
+ (y)2 I
red hot as searing lassos they silking what was blackened marked taunted me the loop of crying my selves did I know and she the little girl hot g sounds You never forget with iron— |
=(r)2 was called a nigger
g sounds, around my neck like white spiders a carousel of hate. the word meant wrong with heat. a radius of shameful skin on roller skates, my circumference. I was in the center of a circle— begin to double. I was different? put them in timeout. rolling away, struck ringing fire songs the first time seared raw, permanent. |
Tiana Clark is a Pushcart Prize nominee and recent recipient of the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. Tiana is an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University. Her poems have appeared in Word Riot, Rattle, Crab Orchard Review and Best New Poets 2015, and are forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, The Offing, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. Find her online at tianaclark.com.