POETRY

Way of the World

By Tatiana M.R. Johnson     Auburn Witness Poetry Prize 2019 Honorable Mention
Vertical Divider
        after Earth, Wind & Fire

on the day he is indicted
his oldest sister remembers
how he threw a rollerblade
at her face against their father
playing an earth, wind & fire record
 
                                                  that’s the way, of the world
 
her eye throbbing with each somber note
this memory now in harmony with her skin
her brother–just a boy, she young, unaware
the way hurt lasts longer
than the duration of a soul ballad
wonders if her brother remembers the origin of his rage?
was it the aftermath of his piss-stained mattress?
the beating? The pee the bed again and you’re gonna get it?
 
the softness of their father’s records glides against a needle
 
                                                  Looking back we’ve touched on sorrowful days
 
the sharp nature of a father with switch in hand
teaching lessons with his belt
the violence of his own father’s death
drowned can after can, how drunk
that home must have been?
the memories a disfigured haze
still sleeping in some part of the body
lacing every bone of every child that lived there
 
                                                  A child is born with a heart of gold
 
the boy, the first one, with the blade
named after his father, perhaps knows the most
of their fathers demons, finds his own over years
but as a boy:
                the fastest runner
                smiled black joy while he chased down
                any kid who would step to his family
                wasn’t the oldest but was
                a boy
 
he and his oldest sister three moons
between them bound by rhythmic blood
the song on loop same anger in their veins
boiling different temperatures
His simmering fentanyl hers mulling grief
of having survived the same house, both
very much alive in what has
become a black man’s mausoleum
 
                                                  Plant your flower and you grow a pearl
 
these descendants from anxious roots
remember the calls from their father
in other facilities, charged
with correcting
perhaps in what some
call a pipeline
there is news
of an opioid crisis
                      remember that uncle?
                      a basketball star in the 80s?
                      life interrupted
                      during another crisis
                      when is there not a crisis
                      seething against a black body?
 
                                                  Way of the world makes his heart so cold
 
this family ritual, melodic
a metronome beating with
every movement in their bones
their lives swallowed, buried
while the aria spins
they do not sing
they have forgotten
​all the words


TATIANA M.R. JOHNSON (she/her/hers) is a writer, artist, and teacher in the Boston area. She’s an MFA candidate in poetry at Emerson College and works as poetry editor for the literary journal Redivider. She was the 2018 Gish Jen fellow for the Writer’s Room of Boston and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize XLI nominee. Her writing explores identity, trauma, especially inherited trauma and what it means to heal. Tatiana’s writing is forthcoming in Transition Magazine, on display at Boston’s City Hall as a part of the 2019 Mayor’s Poetry Program and has been published in Santa Clara Review, Fog Machine, Maps for Teeth Magazine among others. She has also performed at the Boston Poetry Slam and the Bowery Poetry Club. Her chapbook for the love of black girls is available on her website: tatianamrjohnson.com.


VOLUME 52.3