Another Other (Poetry Sequence) by Alia Atkins
dedicated to my hair straightener
​
Another Other is about the idea of racial and class “othering,” but more specifically it’s about “feeling othered” as a Black girl at a white institution. I write about my own personal experiences wearing braids, going to parties, and standing in line at Panda Express hoping that people don’t realize how expensive I find it. Being a Black girl, in a white space, is absurd and all of these poems are meant to highlight that. I use a humorist tone to poke fun at my own alienation and allow myself the space to write nonsensically about how it feels to lack representation, fast internet, or a recipe to make myself fit in. I think that things like microaggressions are so confusing that they deserve equally twisted poems. I create confusion by comparing myself to a lot of non-human objects to express how I feel (most notably: cats, white out, and swimming pools). These objects carry a lot of meaning to me whether they are things I’ve used to try to seem like something I am not or things that I think represent belonging to a certain class. I use the first and last poems to speak to my identity broadly and then order all the other poems in the middle as they get more specific about hair and movie trailers and whether or not Kanye West is a feminist.
​
​
​
In Another Dimension
​
In another dimension I am a space heater
swimming in a backyard pool.
I am a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses
speaking Pig Latin.
In another dimension I am a salt shaker.
I know what is for dinner for tonight.
I am an economics textbook
on ice skates.
What I look like--
I know in another dimension.
I am what people are thinking about
when they write laws.
In another dimension my Black life matters.
If only I had a portal or a lot more white out.
If only I could use my hair straightener
on my pubic hairs.
If only I could transport myself to another dimension.
I could breathe.
​
​
​
When I Wear my Braids to School
​
When I wear my braids to school they sound like
a chip bag opening in a meeting
or an airplane passing over a film shoot.
When I wear my braids to school people say
“Nice dreads,” and they mean it.
My braids say “thank you.”
My earrings cry for attention but go unnoticed.
​
When I wear my braids to school
my whole face looks like Paris 1968.
There is a collision on the 110 freeway South.
Someone stains a seat on the metro bus with ketchup
and a white lady can’t sit down.
A Black
cat walks across the stage in the middle of the Oscars.
​
When I wear my braids to school I feel like
a run on sentence in a cover letter for a writing job.
I hear somebody ask how long my braids took to do.
My braids say “since my ancestors were captured.”
My hair straightener shows up to my class
and tries to seduce me in my chair.
A teacher shushes a conversation happening in the back of the room.
​
When I wear my braids to school
my body carries my head in my hands.
I carry around a wet floor sign for good measure.
I carry around a doctor’s note just in case
somebody asks.
​
​
​
The Front Yard Party
​
The whole party tasted like sprinklers
going off unexpectedly in my mouth.
When we first arrived the air tasted like cleavage
and I tasted like sweater vest.
Someone handed me a jello shot
and it tasted like network.
My friends all tasted like orange cats.
I swallowed my backpack
and took another shot.
Every conversation tasted like that statue of the white horse
or the “On Air” sign in a radio station.
The girl in front of me in the bathroom line
tasted like NAIR hair removal cream.
He walked over to me like a solo cup spilling over
only to realize that I wasn’t who he thought I was.
“I’m sorry, you look exactly like my friend [insert name here].”
His friend was the only other Black girl.
“Don’t worry about it, a lot of people have this jacket!”
Microaggression tastes like a party that happens in the front yard.
​
​
In College
​
In college they wanted me to watch cinema and not movies. So I started watching skim milk and stopped watching the 2%. Maybe if my mother bought skim milk when I was a kid, I would like the taste. But I can only pretend to smell the symmetry and I think it shows. Cinema, and not movies, are all about collared shirts and not collars. A camera once told me it’s because collared shirts are still collared shirts, even when wrinkled. But then what do I do with the tattoo I got on my birth certificate? I only have time but not Time. Magazines love the sunflower who can smirk without being asked-- the comedy about student riots but not students or riots. And when I saw the trailer for the latest Wes Anderson hair grease, I realized why I’ve never seen myself hold a cigarette in the mirror. I don’t have a mirror. Media is how you spell my name if you take out all the letters in black.
​
​
​
In Line at Panda Express
​
Stressed and starved at 12pm,
I stood in the line at Panda Express
in between a feather duster and a hard back cover.
There was a time when waiting in lines smelled like Saturday
but today smelled like Thursday because I had to text my mother back
about my, uh, library
card, before my wallet bled through my pants
and I didn’t have a tampon or anyone to ask.
Standing in line at Panda Express
is good for most coffee mugs or headphones
but I am a purple iPhone charger cord that my dad found at the flea market.
12pm dinner at Panda Express tastes good if it gives you foot room
on the next Greyhound out of your fabric store. My mother would know.
Black women know there is little difference between Timothee Chalamet and Chad
at a Panda Express.
Rice or chow mein?
Chow mein, although I know having a bow might be more filling than having a ribbon.
But not by much. They both are more for your head than for your body.
Shrimp is a dollar twenty five more.
I’m going to have to videotape this so I can eat it later when I’m home.
That’s what we did in 2008 when my mother told me that our window shades
were made of paper.
And then it rained a lot that year.
My poor debit card shoved up the chip insert.
No time to glide. No time for me to post a tweet.
​
​
​
How to Make Yourself Less Noticeable
​
Ingredients: Hot yoga, crest whitening paste, the name Emma, white out, a portal, poops that smell like lulu lemon, leggings, bangs on a dog, library card, a swimming pool full of hydroflasks, a hair straightener for your voice, a horse wearing an Abercrombie and Fitch polo shirt, the unauthorized sequel to Catcher in the Rye, Quentin Tarintino saying “Violence is one of the most fun things to watch,” Wheezer covers, hair scrunchies made out of the English language, Banksy’s head, stocks
​
Directions: Step 1. Do not be angry while learning the words to Bohemian Rhapsody.
Step 2. Stir.
Step 3. Uncapitalize the word black.
Step 4. Let it cool and then serve.
Enjoy!
​
Tip: Ingredients should be organic for it to come out white on the inside.
​
​
​
The Backyard Frat Party
​
A pair of women’s size 6 Air Force 1s walk into a frat
and a few blocks away in a shopping mall
a guy turns the Target bags into wine bags
and then leaves the bags as just targets.
A Black girl burns her hand
on the display of unplugged hair straighteners.
The makeup aisle starts to melt.
A pair of women's size 6 Air Force 1s walk into a frat
and a guy uses his hands to turn them from white
to see through.
He wraps the Nike swoosh around her wrists.
He makes the souls of the shoes leave her body
and then he makes her body
leave the shoes without souls.
My pair of women’s size 6 Air Force 1s walk into a frat
and a guy makes my skin apologize for being there.
And then he makes the paper people chain
I made in elementary school, sitting in the cabinet of my family home
break
to the sound of all of his guy friends proclaiming
that Kanye West is a feminist.
​
​
​
Black Girl Litany
​
Black girl wants to let her hair roll around the room like tumbleweed
but Black girl is told not to jump rope with her chains.
​
Black girl doesn’t get to sit at the multiplication
table, because Black girl is taught that podiums are sirens.
​
Black girl questions if she is more than a gene.
Jacket’s aren’t for Black girls with opinions.
​
Black girl wishes there was a sponge in her uterus.
Black girl is tired of writing her own home birth.
​
Black girl doesn’t know why she isn’t usually a litany.
Black girl forgets that corn rows before she rows it.
​
Black girl feels like an ankle in a graveyard
but Black girl keeps washing out her mouth with Netflix.
​
When you’re not watching Black girl dyes
her hair and wonders if anyone can hear the difference.