Reading Ellison on Ellison Avenue by Chrysanthemum

In exchange for trumpet lessons,

Ralph maintained Ludwig’s lawn.

A fine student at Douglass High,

Ralph rode a westbound streetcar

to learn from an orchestra conductor

who taught at an all-white school:

Classen—where he would be invited

as the one-and-only to study in secret

at a high school he could not attend.

I learn about him in that building,

now desegregated, or so I am told.

At Tuskegee, Ralph received letters  

of encouragement from Ludwig,

not unlike messages I welcomed

from the English teacher who first

shared this story with me. Outside

of class, she would introduce me

to Toni, Alice, Maxine, James.

Fifteen in Oklahoma, I never had

the guts to ask outright if she was—

but she spoke of Vermont, cabins,

love. Our language, only explicit

in books off her shelf.

I carried them home.

To gift me Giovanni means

she had to know: I needed

escape—new rooms to enter

in exchange for my name on record.

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CHRYSANTHEMUM is a poet and performance artist. She currently serves as Co-Director of the Providence Poetry Slam and Writer-in-Residence for the Providence Commemoration Lab. She is a recipient of fellowships from Poetry Foundation, Rhode Island Foundation, Kundiman, and Lambda Literary, which named her LGBTQ Writers in Schools’ inaugural Poet-in-Residence for the LGBTQ+ Youth Poet Laureate Residency. In 2016, she became the first trans woman finalist of the Women of the World Poetry Slam, and her teams won the Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam and the first-ever FEM Slam. With Justice Ameer, she staged the two-woman show ANTHEM at the American Repertory Theater's OBERON. She was born to Vietnamese parents in Oklahoma City.

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