by Angela Johnson
Had to leave the South
to hear somebody call me a nigger
for the first time.
Had to have my head
out the window in
a west side neighborhood
in Cleveland
to hear a girl about my age
scream that knifing word
at my mama's car.
Had to make Mama stop
so I could look at the
face of somebody who
dressed just like me
and probably
wanted what I did
from the world,
bu would never live in
mine.
from The Other Side: Shorter Poems
by Angela Johnson
Orchard Books, 1998
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