Lane Closure

IBRESTER/Adobestock

POETRY FOR INCLUSION

A love for the game

One hand, one ball

Directing the path towards

Strikes, spares, and splits.

A love for connection

Shattered, suffocated, stifled.

One hand, one violent heart

targeting with bullets of odium.

Strikes, spares, and splits.

Bleeding, despairing, grieving

The hands and balls

once filled with verve.

Dr Clark is an outpatient psychiatrist at Prisma Health-Upstate and clinical associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Greenville. He served on the American Psychiatric Association’s Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry, and he currently serves as the Diversity and Inclusion section editor and advisory board member for Psychiatric Times^TM.