A. Van Jordan /  On Stage


The Akron Armory is filled to capacity with more than 2,000 people; mostly parents,
sitting with hats in laps, with fidgeting eyes, with hands held, in a space seldom found
gorged for circuses, boxing, or wrestling, but tonight people are here to see teenagers
spell. Tonight, tethered to the stage, the crowd listens as if a great light commanded their
attention, as if the stage were on fire, as if the whole world, all at once, were trying to
utter one word.

One word? Spelling is a war of letters, syllables, utterances, and inflections. It would
only take a second to end a year’s worth of work: maybe you didn’t hear the announcer,
maybe you conjured a homophone of the word, maybe you felt underdressed for the
lights and applause, maybe a whippin’ awaited you at home after you tripped on a letter,
maybe you just didn’t give a damn, but you were trapped there and so was the crowd;
maybe you cared, but you were tired and the crowd was hungry; maybe you knew this
would always be the crowning moment of your life, but you couldn’t sustain it. It’s like
that sometimes; sometimes the weight is too heavy to lift one word, one letter, off the
tongue.

But you start seeing yourself spelling before the crowd. You envision the competition as
if it were a dream: the stage begins to clear, the field is narrowing down, the competition
is falling, and, instead of gaining confidence you gain weight; you feel as if you’re being
inflated on stage and the more space left on this spot lit landscape, the more you fill it in
with your flesh. The crowd is moving back, the stage is shrinking beneath your hairy
toes, the ceiling is lifting; you see, for the first time, there is a sky above your sky; you
raise an arm to reach it and the crowd gasps, you stretch and the crowd shrieks. You try
to float to the sky in this inflated, brown body through the hole that used to be a ceiling
by raising your arms, but then you hear the announcer, who is bigger than you, who is
twice your size, to whose crotch you now stand, who starts spitting words at you; his
tongue is forked like a crossroad; his head is red and shaped like a thimble—ostensibly,
he has no neck; and he continues spitting words for you to spell as accurately as you can.
But he doesn’t want you to spell them, really; he’s spitting words to find the word that
will eliminate you; the word that you did not memorize among the 100,000 on the list;
the word large enough, contorted enough to choke you. The announcer has a bulge under
his jacket. You don’t know what will happen if you make a mistake. You move from
word to word.  

But this is not the dream. You find that the crowd is actually supportive; they want to see
you spell—not see you spell in a circus act way, mind you, but in an adult-looking-at-a-
child-in-wonderment way—and they will applaud when you open your mouth, when you
say yes sir, no sir; they will applaud when the announcer says, That’s correct, and they
will applaud when you think you can’t go any further for the applause. And then you
realize you’re not alone; you hear John Huddleston, a tall, white teen from St. Vincent-St.
Mary’s, trumpet through Sciatic, but stumble on Cocklebur, but you don’t do any better
and then before Maxine Schumate tries to spell Candelabra, she asks the announcer to
repeat it, Candelabra, as if it were the magic words to a potion. Maxine. Poor Maxine
Schumate: she is now the victim of your dream. She transposes the “l” and the “e.” You
see smoke coming from her mouth, you see flames where her eyes used to set and then
you don’t see her. Vanished. You’re happy. She walks off the stage into the shadow of
shaking heads and consolations. You’re happy? And she now thinks that this wasn’t
worth it anyway. You’re happy? And she will never compete again. You’re happy? As
the shadows and backstage curtains swallow her whole. You’re happy? As her face is
now upholstered with embarrassment. But, for now, you must keep your head up and
rejoice because you’re standing on stage in front of 4,000 blue eyes filled with awe, eyes
that are now fixed on you. The crowd starts leaning in; the crowd is no longer an
audience; the crowd is showing its teeth; the crowd is a proud parent, smiling; the
crowd hears the words of the announcer as clearly as you do: voluble, vol-u-ble, he repeats. Can
you spell it? A voice asks. Can I spell it? A voice whispers. Voluble, V-O-L-U-… The
letters vaporize through the armory and between each one you think of everything you
must think about to get through one word.

Say the letters clearly so they don’t think all Negro girls have thick tongues; don’t give
them a reason to stop letting people like you compete, they already know you’re not
smart enough; don’t confirm it by losing; don’t look unkempt; I told you to soak in the
tub before you go on stage; I told you don’t stay in the sun too long the week before you
go on stage; you don’t want to look too black under those lights on stage; change your
draws before you go on stage; polish your shoes with Kiwi black; brush your teeth with
baking soda; moisten your skin with cocoa butter; I wish you would go on stage ashy;
don’t go on stage ashy; I wish you would go on stage crying; don’t go on stage crying;
keep your back erect even if you miss a word; keep your back erect, even if they call you
a word you don’t like; tell me you know what fork to use; tell me you wore a slip under
that dress; tell me that’s ribbon in your hair; tell me you washed your hair and used oil;
tell me you know the winning word; you gotta listen when they say the word; you gotta
repeat it so they know you knew it; let me hear you spell it like there are no more words
left to spell: voluble, V-O-L-U-B-L-E.


CUE:  A Journal of Prose Poetry
Winter 2005, Volume II, Issue I