THREE POEMS BY ASTA TALL

I’m Asta Tall. I say I am Senegalese-American because it’s the most concise way to describe myself. I was born in Senegal but was raised mostly in America. I spent summers going back to Senegal, where I spent time with my extended family. Over the last ten years, I worked as a journalist across Africa. During that time I got to interact with people from different cultures who would often tell me how closely I resembled them. This is not something I experienced in Senegal. I was often labeled a foreigner, which I never took too deeply to heart because I understood why. 

I am currently residing in Berlin where I am transitioning away from a life in journalism. I am studying digital marketing and exploring living life as a poet. I found freedom here to not only write but explore intricate parts of my identity.

My poems center around identity, love, and trauma. So there’s no better way for me to talk about the dance I often perform being Senegalese by birth and blood but not having that recognized by my fellow country people. 

"...the dance I often perform being Senegalese by birth and blood but not having that recognized by my fellow country people."

OREO

I’m a New Yorker when I say water

I’m a New Yorker when I find humor in twisted things

Friends never say I love you

Instead, find ways to roast each other into oblivion

I’m a New Yorker when I talk at the speed of light 

When I hide a gentle spirit behind a tough exterior

When I bully instead of flirt with potential lovers

I’d always get corrected in the boroughs, you’re from New Ro

Shouldn’t make it seem like I am from the city, guess I am an upstate babe then

I’m a suburban girl with the American dream

Riding my bike around town with daydreams stuck in my mind

Finding my friend who’s a mix just like me

But just like me, no one would guess it

We’d play ding dong ditch and run away on our bikes

We’d eat tacos, cheap and good at the restaurant near her dad’s place

I never told my mom her dad had skin like mine, mahogany adjacent

Didn’t think much of it until he came to pick her up 

Mom asked why I never told her

I never felt much of a need to explain the intricacies of identity

I just was, and so was she

We grew in the ways preteen girls do

She found solace in guys calling her at midnight

I was a dutiful African child, who knew those games were not mine to play

So I found a girl just like me but not quite

She was a New Yorker

Rough like me and with a humor to match

We buried our noses in books and fanfiction

We’d chase summers at the neighborhood pool

Lifeguards growing weary as we abused the pool noodles

She never swam too far

I would find a home in the deep end

To this day that’s how we are

I’ll wail for hours

She’ll just hold it in

We always stood out her with skin like caramel and mine dancing in mahogany hues

Sticking out like sore thumbs in a lily-white pond

She felt it more than me

I never grew among these trees

I never knew my skin tone was more than an adjective

Here it was a viewpoint

It was a character

It was a warning to others of what to expect

But they didn’t know what to make of me

My English far too proper

Diction unmatched by the best of them

They’d stare at me perplexed, unsure of where to place me

The ones who taunted me the most looked like me

Same features, sometimes the same skin too

They called me Oreo, to delineate the difference 

Black exterior with a white interior

I didn’t move or talk like them, never learned the lines to this performance

I guess I wasn’t a New Yorker after all

It never hurt just confused me

I’d turn to my mother, but she didn’t know this land either

Then I got it

For what pain it is to never know all the names of your grandparents

Unlike I, who could walk into a baptism and have my lineage chanted to me

Unlike me, who spent summers under my aunts’ gazes reciting my ancestors’ names

Asta, Ousmane, Bocar, Batouly, Mariam, Cire and 25 generations more I never crammed

No, I’d never understand being sold to a land that 400 years later dared to call you foreign

As if the original sin could never be erased

A sin committed not by those who held your name but by those who held the whip

So it was okay

I could be an Oreo

Delectable and sweet 

Greatly misunderstood

It never bothered me for clarity had never been assigned to my identity 

"...summers under my aunts’ gazes reciting my ancestors’ namesAsta, Ousmane, Bocar, Batouly, Mariam, Cire and 25 generations more..."

IDENTITY ROULETTE

Every time I walk down Avenue Malick Sy I play a game of Russian Roulette

First shot is the long stares and set mouths

Second shot is the easy smiles that spread as they wait

Then the assumptions begin to roll

I’ve been called every nationality under the sun

Ethiopian, Rwandan, Togolese

The top 2, Ghanaian and Kenyan

It might be my forehead jutting out so strongly amidst delicate features

One time a man brought me to the riverbanks

As I was ankles deep in ancestral waters he asked me if I was Dutch

I look down at my mahogany sticks for legs, rarely do I find myself stumped

That’s how strongly my homeland drives to call me foreign

I let them fumble around 

Then I set them with my eyes brown like theirs

Eyelashes curled and feathered to bat away desert sands

Finally, I release the bullet from its chamber

I’m Senegalese

Now comes my favorite stage, bargaining

Worry not, no it’s not my grief that needs processing

I rarely feel melancholy tied to my identity

But they feel unsettled

They search frantically for a fitting explanation

See, everyone has a role on this avenue

The boys carry their buckets 

They offer passersby a chance at salvation for just a Franc

Some drop food, coins, but rarely bills into their buckets

Most avert their gaze

It’s too hard to look at their bare feet and child-like gaze

The men here sit drinking tea

Or they play duck, duck, goose with passing cars

Looking for one who will wait for just a second

To buy a tissue box, breaker fluid, anything 

So they can fill the bellies waiting at home

If you’re stuck sipping tea or chasing cars all comes down to chance

The women, oh the women

They saunter in ways I refused to learn

I remember those days, no weeks, I spent nestled in the dunes

Aunts chasing me with a pagne, begging me to wrap the fabric around my hips

But my stride jutted out too far

I’ve always been too forward

The only thing that’s direct here is direct deposit 

And even that’s not guaranteed

From the banks to the streets everything follows an archaic procedure

From hellos to betrayals there’s a way things are done

Then there’s me reeking of familiarity 

Yet playing my role with the lackluster zeal of a star-long-forgotten

I know the words, the way I should walk off stage

But I don’t feel the passion or duty to carry out the role to its full completion

They can’t wrap their heads around that

That someone can feel the weight of obligation passed down by our society 

and simply opt-out

So they turn to their final escape

The way my tongue lands on consonances

The way my voice lifts at the end of every sentence

You’re American!

Yes, my flower bloomed across the ocean

That explains it all they exclaim

Does it?

No nuance in that

They’ve already created a character in their head

Lost Americanah

A wayward child who doesn't know better

Like I didn’t spend summers with my toes in the same sand

Like didn’t watch my aunts’ fingers curl around beads spraying benedictions 

on our bloodline

Like I didn’t see all the beauty and inequity

No, more comfort in fitting me into a predesignated mold

So when I speak of our ills they can ascribe my sight to the fog of a Western view

I walk down Avenue Malick Sy and let them play pretend

I don’t mind it much 

I know the reassurance of  incorrect assumptions comforts them

Far more than the truth of my identity ever could 

"I’ve been called every nationality under the sun

Ethiopian, Rwandan, Togolese..."

GREY GIRL GLOW

People here look at me and call me an adjective never before attached to my personhood

She said the same to me blue eyes squinting with a hint of surprise

You look happy, she says

I Have certain je ne sais quois now

Except I know what it is 

It’s the hemlines that inch closer to my hips than I’ve dared in years

It’s the gazes of attraction not so heavily weighed by the oppression of my sex

Here I have no shame

No family name to sprinkle dishonor upon

Here my identity only requires the explanation I’m willing to give

They accept wherever I decide to draw borders

No all-knowing voice booming with corrections

No sly ask filled with questions passive on the surface but aggressive in their intent

Here no one takes offense in my being

I know it’s weird 

I’m a summer girl born under the desert sun

Yet I glow under these grey skies

I bloom with a mic held close to my lips in a cramped Wedding cafe

My soul finds a home listening to friends old and new pour their wounds

The little girl in me finds her voice dancing under disco lights 

Friends behind the deck playing an anthem to my liberation

I feel at ease in every space

I feel myself finally

No family bond forcing my gaze to a land that holds my trauma

My Americanah accent gets lost in a medley of others

I’m no one here

Yet I’m everything I should’ve been

Paving these Berlin streets with my gold

Here they gravitate towards me in ways I always admired in others

All I needed was to be freed from the apologies

I spent my whole life muttering them

Sorry my French is tinged with foreignness

Sorry I sway my hips like a white girl

Sorry I’m not Senegalese enough or black enough

Sorry for my nerves they were born of the expectations I assumed 

What a silly thing, I think with my headphones plugged in as I get lost in a myriad of trees

I peek through the leaves to stare at the clouds

I know I am minuscule in scale

Yet I feel monumental in the vast universe around me

Asta Tall is a poet living in Berlin, Germany. She enjoys photography, swimming in the ocean and tennis.

Twitter @astatall

Instagram @asta.thepoet