Tiana Clark’s debut chapbook, Equilibrium, won the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsored by Bull City Press. She is the winner of the 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. Her debut collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, was published in 2018.
Bear Witness
after Carrie Mae Weems’s Roaming series
Before I knew
how to fill my onyx body
with slick measures,
dip every curve
in my skin with dark sway,
I needed a picture.
Before me stood
a long black dress I called Woman—
you stand opaque
with your back to me,
a statue of witness,
the door of Yes—
I can Return
to the monument
of your silhouette
to find my longest muscle.
We both stare down
the ocean to stillness.
O, Carrie—
what are you trying
to tell me here?
I’ve been standing by water
my whole damn life
trying to get saved.
[This poem originally appeared on August 19, 2016.]
Copyright (c) 2016 by Tiana Clark. All rights reserved. “Bear Witness” first appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal.
Tagged: 2016 Southern Festival of Books, Poetry, Tiana Clark
