I Am at the Tate with You

after Tiana Clark

Tiana, I’m lonely too and imagine myself standing 
     next to you at the Tate. Now, we are three Blacks: 
you, me and The Negro Scipio seated upon a stool— 
     the muddy, sloped mountain of his elongated 
back, the mottled skin in umber’s shades. 

His arm falls upon an almost white mass. 
     Some see it as cotton. I cannot say. 
What I know of raw cotton is insignificant, 
     but it would be bales and there’s no wire here, 
or it would be burlap, and there’s no overflowing, 
     bulbous mounds protruding.

Scipio leans like a man who’s finished work 
    and needs to rest his eyes or dream.

What would it have been to be a dark man in 1867’s France
     far from ancestral lands, an artist’s model to make 
easy money, to rest from swinging the sledgehammer 
     or from hauling burdens, or carrying 
water on his shoulder and enjoy the luxury of hours 
     seated in a restful pose and be paid for it?

Let Cézanne take all the time he needs to refine 
     the musculature of your back, the folds of your blue pants, 
capture the weariness of your shoulders and the weight 
     of your bowed head.

ELLEN JUNE WRIGHT

Ellen June Wright is an American poet with British and Caribbean roots. Her work has been published in Plume, Tar River, the Missouri Review, Verse Daily, Gulf Stream, Solstice, and other journals. She’s a Cave Canem and Hurston/Wright alumna and has received Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations.