This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment.
This past fall, a presidential candidate was questioned, surprisingly, for identifying as black. In today’s poem, “Race,” Shara McCallum considers the ways that choice plays a role in identity. What does it mean, she asks, to be seen, really seen? What does it mean to be accepted for the person you choose to be?
From Jamaica and born to a Jamaican father and Venezuelan mother, Shara McCallum is the author of seven books, published in the US & UK, including Behold, forthcoming from Alice James Books in September 2026, and No Ruined Stone, winner of the 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, McCallum teaches at Penn State University.
In the prologue to Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man, the unnamed narrator muses, “I am invisible. . . simply because people refuse to see me…. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination— indeed, everything and anything except me.” Later, he adds, “It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.” Although widely separated by time, gender, and circumstances, Shara McCallum likewise ponders invisibility and identity. However, she poses this question: What does it feel like to be “the whitest black girl you ever saw”?
Here’s “Race” by Shara McCallum
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You are the original incognito.
Transparent, all things shine through you.
She’s the whitest black girl you ever saw,
lighter than “flesh” in the Crayola box.
But, man, look at that ass and look at her shake it
were just words, not sticks or stones, flung
when dresses were the proof that clung like skin,
when lipstick stained brighter than any blood.
Girl, who is it now you’d want to see you?
And what would that mean: to be seen?
Why not make a blessing of what
all these years you’ve thought a curse?—
you are so everywhere, so nowhere,
in plain sight you walk through walls.
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from Madwoman by Shara McCallum (Alice James Books, US, 2017)
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That was “Race” by Shara McCallum. Thanks for listening.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
