Tiana Clark is the author of I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a 2019 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 2017 Furious Flower Poetry Center's Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize, and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. She teaches creative writing at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
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occasions
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.
From I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood. Copyright © 2018 by Tiana Clark. Used with the permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.
From I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood. Copyright © 2018 by Tiana Clark. Used with the permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.
Tiana Clark
Tiana Clark is the author of I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018).