i am tired of being pizza
Josh Cake
Winner of the 2021
Peseroff Poetry Prize
"I love the way this poem explores mixed race identity through the extended metaphor of a pizza being sliced up into fractions—pointing out how race has been problematically constructed as something quantifiable, divisible, a math problem to be dissected rather than a complicated lived experience. There’s fantastic humor and playfulness in this poem and the way slashes are used works so effectively, too, in underscoring the subject of fractions."
—Chen Chen, finalist judge
what fraction are you? / what fraction black / brown /
white / belonging / not belonging / what fraction of
you is you? / what / frac / is / what are you?
school teacher said i am mixed / so could i please list
my fractions / stand at the front / name every land
in my blood / teacher wrote my ancestors
inside cartoon pizza slices / on the white board /
teacher said i am a great example of fractions / and i
learned / i am a great example / when i am broken
apart
so i learned my fractions / halve me / quarter me / i
know how to divide myself for others / everyone likes
pizza / my stand-up opener: “i am descended from
slaves and slave traders, so i make myself work hard”
/ the crowd always laughs / pit me against me / write
essays on “reconciling identities” / never tasted my
lungs
girlfriend’s friends are woke / white / delighted / she is
dating someone “diverse” / ask me my fractions / i am
well rehearsed / tell me they love Obama / say they
envy my skin / one says it looks like semisweet
chocolate / another says dark chocolate / debate about
me / without me / forty per cent / sixty per cent / no
one agrees on my cacao fraction / the next day
at the shop i stare at the map above the chocolate shelf
maps are just neat lies / if you go to the place marked
“border” / you can walk with one foot on each side / it
does not hurt
i am tired of being pizza / i will be soup / no soup is
half potato half okra / potato and okra soup is all
potato all okra / i am throwing away the pizza knife /
today i hold myself with a ladle
my lungs are always together / my lungs hold all of me
with every breath / breath only splinters at my larynx /
my exhale is whole until / i speak me into fractions
JOSH CAKE was born and raised in Melbourne, on the unceded land of the Kulin Nation, and has worked in poetry, comedy, and music in Australia, Italy, and France. Josh creates work for a variety of contexts—from Canadian spoken word to Icelandic cabaret, from US video games to Chinese universities, from French theatres to Australian art galleries. His poetry has been published in Cordite, Poems by Young Australians, Pendemic, and Messages from the Embers. In June, he is launching his debut spoken word album words to regret when i'm better at editing.
Header art: "Manakin" by Roger Camp.
Poetry
