I Read about Nella Larsen and I Calculated

1

The six months I spent 

with a literacy specialist in first grade 

just to prove I read 

above grade level, 

because the school assumed 

I’d be 

at risk: ten pounds of decodables

and leveled readers,

two ounces of earwax

the frizzy gray bob shook

when I picked while I read:

approximately half an

ounce from the teacher’s

eyes gazed upon

me when I read

faster than the rest

of the kids in my

class.

2

The sunburns turning

me a tourist 

tree in my father’s

mother island, the inflamed

flesh my cousins never

feared as they threw red

seagrass near my Nanna’s

house in New Providence:

six pounds (give or take

several ounces of aloe vera lotion).

3

The

average shower

Mom scours me into

taking when I arrive home,

and my skin is a dish soiled from

too much sun, unaware that—surprise!

Her lettuce-left-on-the-plate-eyed son holds

more than a wiggling hoard of cholesterol or

the hills of gas rumbling from the lactose

neither he nor his father could let

go: 133.44 pounds of

scalding water.

4

The Dodge RAM

that tows an even

redder, rustier man’s

What are you?

while I’m just trying to make it

on to the activity bus:

6,400 pounds.

5

The metal scanner wand when my

Father and I touch down

turquoise glass at the BCN

Airport, only for security to

touch some insecure

part of us, “randomly,” 

of course:

menos de una libra

(pero más que el vaivén

del aire que palpita

dentro de mi pecho,

more than the tide ties my

tongue when the waiter speaks

like I didn’t learn Spanish

in an underfunded facsimile

of an IB program en los EE UU.

6

All the college hook up

messages that dragged me

back to the Dodge Ram question

or Mom’s insistence I scrub

a little harder: half an ounce

(the weight of a pair of eye balls)

multiplied by

too many to count.

Lee Summers© 4/9/2026

I drew inspiration for this piece not only from reading about Nella Larsen and realizing how her background parallels mine in ways, but also from the bicon poet Ryan Stephen Thornton’s prompt for today, “the exact weight of someone’s attention on your skin.” You can check out his prompts for this momth here.

I’m loathe to over explain my work, but if you want an explanation, I have a poem that addresses these aspects of my identity that’s a lot more on the telling end of the showing/telling continuum: Until I import it to Wrizzit, here’s a link to it on Substack