hArtworks
Winter 2006 • $5

Featured Writer: Naomi Ayala

The Charles Hart Middle School Literary Magazine

Sha mia H ouse

The hArtworks Editorial Board
Writers-in-Residence: Dwayne Betts, Aisha Brantley, Omekongo Dibinga, James Saunders,
Nancy Schwalb, Venus Thrash, and Jamila Wade
The Literary Magazine Club: Luqman Abdullah, Maryum Abdullah, Shannon Allen, India Bell,
Terry Bennett, Antoinette Better, Stelita Better, Danielle Blake, Denisha Bolden, Ashley Boston,
Antonio Bower, A. Montel Brooks, Jada Brooks, Steven Brown Jr., Tomika Brown, Jamal Buggs,
Jamal Clark, Kiera Coleman, Reginald Conway, Ashley Cooper, Dominique Courtney, Nefertearia
Crawley, Markiya Davis, Martanaze Dew, Cherish Gaines, Dai’Juna Gales, Bruce Gibson, Andrea
Hermans, Shamia House, Markus Johnson, Shaiski Johnson, Yasmin Jones, Damon Kee, NichellKee, Symone Kennedy, Jalencia King, Debria Lewis, Marvin McDowell, Shambriel Metts, Aasiyah
Muhammed, Kiana Murphy, Jasmine Murray, Ja’Quan Newsome, Ashanti Paylor, Coletta Paylor,
Keyosha Richardson, Marché Shields, Bnyonka Simpkins, Monae Smith, Beatrice Smoot, Jessica
Smoot, Ashley Stevenson, Danielle Stover, Wendie Thomas, Tierra Thornton, James Tindle,
Tionna Wade, Devonté Walker, Jamie Warren, Brittany Watkins, Jamal Whittington, Deshaun
Williams, Jamal Williams, Renita Williams, Beverly Wright, Taniek Young
front cover, l–r: Shamia House, James Saunders, Yasmine Jones2

IntroductionW

elcome to hArtworks, the nation’s only inner-city public middle school literary magazine,
written and edited by the students of Charles Hart Middle School. hArtworks is publishedthrough a collaborative effort between the school and the D.C. Creative Writing
Workshop, an independent non-proﬁt working to create a literary renaissance inSoutheast Washington. Now in its sixth year, hArtworks gives our young writers the opportunity to exercise
their creative energies, speak their minds, and be heard by an audience throughout the city. The 2006
edition of Poet’s Market recognizes hArtworks as “an outstanding example of what a literary journal can be(for anyone of any age).”
This year we welcome four new writers, Dwayne Betts, Aisha Brantley, Omekongo Dibinga, and Venus
Thrash, who join Nancy Schwalb and Jamila Wade as senior writers-in-residence. We also celebrate thereturn of James Saunders, a 16 year old junior at Ballou Senior High, for his second year as junior writerin-residence. And the 2006–07 school year marks the start of our college internship program, bringing us
the capable and committed service of Meilani Clay, Maricia Herron, and Katie Hinden.
We have many friends who have helped to make hArtworks possible, and we would like to express our
gratitude to them. Our sincerest thanks go out to the Herb Block Foundation, Morris and Gwendolyn
Cafritz Foundation, Children’s Fund of Metropolitan Washington, Commonweal Foundation, Community
Foundation for the National Capital Region, Fannie Mae Foundation, John Edward Fowler Foundation,
Harman Family Foundation, Hitachi Foundation, International Monetary Fund, Junior League of
Washington, Mattel Children’s Foundation, Moran Family Fund, Meyer Foundation, The Tom Lane Fund,
Wachovia Foundation, Wendling Foundation, Weissberg Foundation, The World Bank, Anonymous,the friends and family of Anna Su, Michael Joy and TSCJoy/Monterey, LLC, Sarah Booth and Bloomberg
L.P., Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Karibu Books, Holly Mansﬁeld and GO! Creative, the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum, the Arena Stage, the Shakespeare Theatre, McGuire Associates, Joyce Page and Ms.
Printing, Tollefson & Gustini Investment Management, our friends at Popeye’s on Malcolm X Avenue,
Gregory Auger, George and Lenore Cohen, Fritz Edler, Tom and Carolyn Grey, Mark Hollinger and Kathy
McNeil Hollinger, Frances Horn, Betsy Karel, Gay and Charlie Lord, Judine
Slaughter, Raina Rose Tagle, friends of the late Meyer Saul Taubman, Juanita
Wade, Vera M. White, and Martin Youmans.
Special thanks for the hard work and dedication of the D.C. Creative Writing
Workshop Board of Directors: Mary Ann Brownlow, Dr. Susan Gerson,
Bernie Horn, Kathleen Huston, Michael Joy, Joan Kennan, Bill Newlin,
Nancy Schwalb, Kirsten Tollefson, and Jamila Wade.
We would also like to thank the following administrators, teachers, and staff
who are our partners in this endeavor: Principal Willie Bennett; AssistantPrincipals Ms. Kimberly Douglas and Mr. Shawn Pelote; Ms. Katherine
Bucholtz, Ms. Gloria Fergusson, Ms. Carolyn Jackson, Ms. Terrie SpannTchama, Ms. Joan Lusaka, Ms. Eleanor Seale, Ms. Pamela McKinney, Ms.
Ann Brogioli, Ms. Trenia Wilson and Ms. Maevern Williams.

3InsidehArtworks presents featured poet Naomi Ayala ................................................................... 40
Brujo No. 28 for Drawing Your Ancestors .................................................................................. 41
Magnolia ................................................................................................................................ 45
Hole ....................................................................................................................................... 45

Maryum Abdullah

Our student writers
Luqman Abdullah
I am? ...................................................................................................................................... 25
House Kid ............................................................................................................................... 25
All over the inside of me ........................................................................................................... 26
I read my palm ........................................................................................................................ 26
I Know Why ............................................................................................................................ 70
Maryum Abdullah
More than you think................................................................................................................. 28
Ode to the Moon ...................................................................................................................... 28
Shannon Allen
Nature’s Kaleidoscope .............................................................................................................. 65
Untitled .................................................................................................................................. 65
Antonio Alston Untitled ............................................................................................................... 78
Lathan Armstead A Stranger ......................................................................................................... 37
India BellA note to God .......................................................................................................................... 66
I am India ............................................................................................................................... 66
My Life Is a Wild Ride ............................................................................................................. 67
Tylia Bell Dancing......................................................................................................................... 18
Terry Bennett Alliteration ............................................................................................................. 28
Marquell Bethea School Time ........................................................................................................ 76
Antoinette Better Shadow ............................................................................................................. 39
Stelita Better My Shadow .............................................................................................................. 27
Danielle Blake
My Life ................................................................................................................................... 53
My Moody Days ...................................................................................................................... 54
My Inner Shadow .................................................................................................................... 54
My Life Is................................................................................................................................ 55
Denisha Bolden Life and Wisdom.................................................................................................. 70
A. Montel Brooks
Think.................................................................................................................................................21
Montel Reads His Own Palm.............................................................................................................22
Sleep .................................................................................................................................................22
Winter...............................................................................................................................................23
Prince ..................................................................................................................................... 23
Jada Brooks Fireﬂy ....................................................................................................................... 50
David Brown Chaos ..................................................................................................................... 73
Jamal Buggs
Inside the body ....................................................................................................................... 26
Loving Moment ...................................................................................................................... 27
Almus BushMy Name .............................................................................................................................. 13

4

Damon Kee

Kiera Butler
Real Music .............................................................................................................................. 74
Untitled .................................................................................................................................. 76
Suffocating .............................................................................................................................. 76
Darell Caldwell Skittles ................................................................................................................ 69
Curtis Canty I Am ........................................................................................................................ 75
Dearah Chappell October ............................................................................................................. 15
Herman Clark
Ode to the pencil sharpener ................................................................................................... 75
Dangerous girl like a gun ....................................................................................................... 75
Jamal Clark S.E. Congress Heights ................................................................................................. 47
Kiera Colemanblank boy ................................................................................................................................ 11
an ode to shoes ........................................................................................................................ 49
Reginald Conway
I am, I am... ............................................................................................................................ 61
My Life Is a Car ...................................................................................................................... 61
Dream of the Oceans ............................................................................................................... 62
Cleaning Grandma .................................................................................................................. 62
Jamal Conyers On a hill of gold ..................................................................................................... 14
Ashley Cooper Linda Reads Her Own Palm ................................................................................... 51
Giovanni Copeland Giovanni ....................................................................................................... 15
Nefertearia Crawley Where I wanna be ......................................................................................... 29
Markiya Davis Waking Up, Unity .................................................................................................. 48
Clas Duncan Fire ......................................................................................................................... 46
Demetrius Foreman October ........................................................................................................ 13
Cherish Gaines
Ode to the box ......................................................................................................................... 58
Waking Up.............................................................................................................................. 59
Bruce Gibson Untitled .................................................................................................................. 49
Sherita Grady I Am ...................................................................................................................... 76
Tywain Greene In those days when my father was still big ................................................................ 10
Kiauna Hamilton Close Your Eyes ................................................................................................. 38
Jevin Hampton Silent Storm ......................................................................................................... 35
Martha Hardman Untitled ............................................................................................................ 79
Andrea Hermans
Poematic: Taste for Tomorrow .................................................................................................. 12
Hear My Words ....................................................................................................................... 12
Jasper Hicks Sleep ........................................................................................................................ 79
Cameron Hilliard A School Desk ................................................................................................... 38
Shamia House
December ............................................................................................................................... 30
Kaleidoscope ........................................................................................................................... 31
The Angry Sea......................................................................................................................... 31
Shamia Reads Her Own Palm................................................................................................... 32
Devon Hudson Valley of Death ..................................................................................................... 34
Quanika Jackson
Wooden Heart ......................................................................................................................... 14
Winter .................................................................................................................................... 14

5

InsideXavierTempest Jackson From Sunrise to Sunset ....................................................................................... 34
Trevon Jackson A Poem for Myself (or blues for a North Carolina boy) ............................................. 48
Earl JamesMy Poem ................................................................................................................................ 69
Open the Door ........................................................................................................................ 70
Bryant Jenifer December ............................................................................................................... 16
Brittany Johnson
Untitled .................................................................................................................................. 75
Homes .................................................................................................................................... 77
Dominique Johnson She Is ........................................................................................................... 69
Marcus Johnson My Name ........................................................................................................... 63
Markus Johnson Being 19 years old ............................................................................................... 52
Shainairie Jones My Family .......................................................................................................... 35
Yasmin Jones
Her Own Palm ........................................................................................................................ 57
Dreaming of the world .............................................................................................................. 57
I am ....................................................................................................................................... 57
My emotions ........................................................................................................................... 58
Damon KeeThe Dark ................................................................................................................................ 19
Sleep ...................................................................................................................................... 24
Unﬁnished .............................................................................................................................. 24
Destruction ............................................................................................................................. 24
What did I say......................................................................................................................... 24
Nichell Kee
Untitled .................................................................................................................................. 55
My Winter .............................................................................................................................. 56
Fly! ........................................................................................................................................ 56
Secret evolution ....................................................................................................................... 59
Manaiza Kelly
Who Am I?.............................................................................................................................. 77
Dancing to Go-Go ................................................................................................................... 77
Tiara Mason Unﬁnished Business as a Child ................................................................................... 11
Jannett McKoy Dreaming ............................................................................................................. 77
Shambriel Metts My Ode to Pink .................................................................................................. 49
Aasiyah Muhammad through my kaleidoscope ............................................................................... 67
Kiana Murphy
The Sleeping World .................................................................................................................. 19
May ....................................................................................................................................... 19
Rollercoaster ........................................................................................................................... 20
Haikus: Why? .......................................................................................................................... 20
Misty World ............................................................................................................................ 21
Jasmine Murray My Kaleidoscope.................................................................................................. 18
Destiny Myles The Struggle .......................................................................................................... 38
Mark Neal Another Monday .......................................................................................................... 12
Colletta Paylor My House ............................................................................................................. 46
Kiarra Payton The life of love ......................................................................................................... 74

6

Bnyonka Simpkins

Evan Phoenix
Untitled .................................................................................................................................. 36
My Friend............................................................................................................................... 38
Latia Pimble My Special Wisdom................................................................................................... 72
Eric Quarles
Untitled ................................................................................................................................. 78
My Pain ................................................................................................................................. 78
Raymond Reynolds My Life.......................................................................................................... 13
Lequonte Rhones Cool Fire .......................................................................................................... 37
Keyosha Richardson My Crazy Friend .......................................................................................... 50
Myah Robertson Untitled ............................................................................................................. 74
James Saunders
When I am like the world ........................................................................................................... 9
Slave Haikus ............................................................................................................................. 9
His Future .............................................................................................................................. 10
Brittney Savoy Joy Inside My Tears ................................................................................................ 71
Marché Shields Ode to the Moon ................................................................................................... 28
Johnetta Simmons Hyperbole ....................................................................................................... 22
Keishawna Simms My Poem ......................................................................................................... 72
Bnyonka Simpkins
Homeland ............................................................................................................................... 67
Summer .................................................................................................................................. 68
Dawayne Singleton Commander-in-Chief ...................................................................................... 36
Demarco Singleton Braids ............................................................................................................ 75
Monae Smith
Intense Personal Color ............................................................................................................. 63
Monae Reads Her Own Palm.................................................................................................... 64
Pathos .................................................................................................................................... 64
Kaleidoscope ........................................................................................................................... 65
Jessica Smoot Colors .................................................................................................................... 29
Antonio Spencer
Nervous Breakdown................................................................................................................. 10
December ............................................................................................................................... 13
Jemaroco Spencer A New Republic................................................................................................ 37
Jakeia Steele Like Dancing on the Moon ......................................................................................... 36
Ashley Stevenson
A Poem for Myself .................................................................................................................... 46
December ............................................................................................................................... 59
Kaleidoscope ........................................................................................................................... 60
Shadow .................................................................................................................................. 60
What I think at night................................................................................................................ 60
Danielle Stover Breathless ............................................................................................................. 27
Wendie Thomas
Mother ................................................................................................................................... 50
Joyful...................................................................................................................................... 73
Tierra Thornton
Open Mind ............................................................................................................................. 51
My Shadow ............................................................................................................................. 52
Ode to Candy .......................................................................................................................... 52
I’ll Tell You.............................................................................................................................. 53

7

InsideMonae Smith

James Tindle
Falling Star ............................................................................................................................. 32
April ...................................................................................................................................... 33
Untitled .................................................................................................................................. 33
Every Deﬁnition Entry (Tree) ................................................................................................... 33
Crimson.................................................................................................................................. 34
DeJon Tucker
My Amazing Wisdom .............................................................................................................. 71
I Write Fiercely ....................................................................................................................... 72
Tionna Wade Dewayne reads his own palm.................................................................................... 29
Devonte Walker I Am .................................................................................................................. 47
Jamie Warren
My Heart ................................................................................................................................ 66
the voice ................................................................................................................................. 66
Da’Shawn Washington
Ode to the heart ...................................................................................................................... 75
Saturday ................................................................................................................................. 75
Kaniece Whitaker delicate ............................................................................................................ 71
Amber Williams Poem ................................................................................................................. 47
Deshaun Williams Katrina ........................................................................................................... 51
Nicole Williams
I know, I don’t know ................................................................................................................. 73
Emotions ................................................................................................................................ 73
Renita Williams
Dreamer ................................................................................................................................. 16
Angry Mood Days.................................................................................................................... 16
Haunted Haikus ...................................................................................................................... 17
Ode to the Trees....................................................................................................................... 17
I am, I am ............................................................................................................................... 18
The Great Life ......................................................................................................................... 30
Dimitrius Winters Summer .......................................................................................................... 11
Day’Quan Wright
The Me No One Sees ................................................................................................................ 68
Wild Style ............................................................................................................................... 69
Joylin Yates
Pathos .................................................................................................................................... 35
Confused Is She ....................................................................................................................... 39
Emmanuel Youman Inside............................................................................................................ 71

8

m
Luq

an A

bdullahSlave Haikus
I
Fettered together
Packaged with malevolence
like fresh frivolous sardinesII
Barefoot and bound tightThis great peregrination
was far from the end

When I am like the world
Ironically, it is when I’m most self-conscious;
it is when I care what everyone else says.
When fatigue is festering
and I won’t die until I’m gently burnedby the gracious sun in the morning.

III
Alienated
In this inhuman hospice
my fear can’t be tamedIV
I sat and pondered
Fathoming what my crime wasand couldn’t ﬁnd one
James Saunders

Lying in the bed, fresh out of the shower
my belly is ﬁlled with food, my homework is done.
I’m in my PJs, and these late-night re-runs effectively sedate me.
I’m ready.
Lying in the bed, I ﬁght this impending darkness.
I have the world to blame for this fear.
It’s their fault.
Every night it comes.
And when it comes, I am like them.
I am then concerned with their humanist notions of life.
I am then fearful of going to sleep,
to die, and not to wake in the morning.
I’m no longer this outcast, rebel-type of guy
but I’m one of them.
I’m scared, just like them.
James Saunders

9His Future
He comes from bologna and government cheese sandwiches,and juice, just juice.
He comes from corruption.
He has been blinded by the myths that promise him
dope boy status
if he is true about gettin’ this money.
Senile senior hood-rich celebrities
tied the blindfold real tight, didn’t they?
Ironically, he’s otherwise insouciant, until he’s ﬁlling his mind
with false dreams of hood stardom.
Corrupted, thoughtful, consumed, anxious.
He thinks of his future;it’s like he’s reading his palm.
And the doom that he experienced left him in awe.
Now he has this moment to choose:
Life, or death.
James Saunders

Nervous Breakdown
In those days when my father
was still big
On a hill of gold
near the big palace overhead
and at the bottom is an oceanwith wind blowing hard
Sudden moonlight pops up out of nowhere
like there’s something crazy going on
I was on top of the hill and criedover the rose
It was a pretty little rose
Tywain Greene

10

My feelings are as vivid
as a blank memory.
Pointedly, I’ve forgotten
my faithful love for you.
I’m losing my mind.
Beyond that,
I think I’m losing my soul.
Antonio Spencer

e ll

Ke

e

Ni

When I watch him sit there
blank in destruction
as the day goes by
I see deceit in the young boy’s eyeschblank boyHis character is like a shadowof humiliation
sittin’ on the street
bitter, mishandled, so much chaos
insane, he thought
The battle for friends, he lost,
and, broken,
tossed around, tumbling, and full of commotion
but the ﬂame of dignity makes him standand everyone realizes he is alive
Kiera Coleman

Unfinished Business as a ChildMy life as a child was likea palace crumbling.
My schoolwork was majestic.
My social life was a hurricane.
My inspiration as a child was my mother,
she was my only friend.
The school year was life,
a never-ending staircase.
In my music class, my song sounded.
That was my life as a child.
Tiara Mason

SummerI
You can smell ﬂowers
You can taste ice cream
You can feel sweat when you are hot
And you can hear people at the swimming poolII
You hear a crowd of people
You smell breath andyou feel hands moving everywhere
taste blood, and spite, and tears
Dimitrius Winters

11

Poematic: Taste for Tomorrow
Hear my words, forbidden clouds
In my time, it becomesa time of drowsy vision.
For you it comes, a wild weathered winda feather that plays the violin
with the unlit rubies
that are in my room.
Invisible candle that will do as I say once again.
Andrea Hermans

Hear My Words
Someplace, forget strength,
rattling memories, drowsy songs,
wild oceans that are a haze.
A shadow of a rosethat is velvet, and cotton
that will crumble
and glittering ﬂames.
Staircase, heart beating,like a sound of the rain
beating, candle twilightin the zone.

Another Monday
Another Monday at school, so normal and plain.
I get to class and fall asleep, and I drift into a corner
where my heart beats so loudI calm my soul and forget wild and crazy hurricanes,
strong and wild, to see so much on a Monday.
I drift into a deep sleep, like last Monday,
the same dream, but a different surrounding.
I hear a sudden song that I heard once before—
It begins to rain lightning from the sky,
tornados and hurricanes destroy many homes.
The bell had rung, it was time to go,
I wandered up and up until I reached the door of forgiveness.
I went home and lay down and the day was over,and my eyes closed, and Monday was over.
Mark Neal

12

Hear my words!
Andrea Hermans

wa

y

Re

I can see all the children shine
as they’re playing in the snow.
I can hear the laughter of the children
as all the things beyond them areforgotten.
I can smell the smooth white snow
like a scented candle.
I can think of my bad days,
move on,as I go along.

ld

n
Co

gin

a

DecemberAntonio Spencer

My Life

October

My life as a child is like a hurricane
blowing a strong wind over the clouds.

October—its plangency, its glow
In October, you can smell rain
You also can taste rain
Feeling that rain makes your hands soft.

It’s a man that cried for forgivenesswhen he stole something.
My life is like a velvet rose
getting ready to be put in water.
My life is like my memory
climbing a staircase to my future.
Raymond Reynolds

My Name
My name is like a crazy darkness
hidden in the deep center of my closet.
My name is evil, it kills me inside;
I’m scared to say my name out loud.
I hope my name dies.
Almus Bush

You can feel the cold white snow.
Feeling ﬁre makes me want to cook hot tea.
Hearing those little coins makes me want to go tochurchand hear them shake those bells.
When the cold rain comes down
it brings back good memoriesof what happenedin my lifetime
The way I dream, it feels like
I’m going to be a good actor.
When I feel the sun, I can see my own ghosta bright, shiny light.
Demetrius Foreman13

On a hill of gold
On a hill of gold,
I feel like I had one million emeralds
and I was in the palace, and when it’s dawn
I will be king of the worldand every wild animal will be mineand every person will be forgiven.
Suddenly, a strong heartbeat, and someone
poisons me
I slowly fall asleep
my bones are feeling hazy
it is all silence.
They think I was dead,they say I was gone forever.
my eyes were in the back of my head,
they dumped me in the trash
and they found a new king.
And he led them badly,
he made them pick cottonand made them build towers.
They cried, praying for a new kingand they ran away.
Someplace, there was a big thirst for waterand I woke up, and they came backand they saw me awake, and we had a feastand everyone was happy.
Jamal Conyers

Wooden HeartHis heart is so wooden, it burns in the ﬂames,
The afternoon has hit and it’s harder than the rain.
Tumble down upon me like bricks,
Wooden hurts like this splinter I can’t forget.
Quanika Jackson

WinterDecember—howls like the wolves in the woods
it sleeps like the bears, so we hibernate
and they dream of white nights
where the snow and everything will be alrightStand over the ﬁre so we don’t freeze up
drinking hot cocoa, now that’s the stuff
As laughter comes upon us,
we fade into the dark
It’s nighttime, a couple more days
when the mysteries will start
Our eyelids close,beyond the secrets and grins
knowing tomorrow is another day
Quanika Jackson14

l– r:

Octoberna

M
ur

LAUGHTER
Laughter is what I hear,
this is the best time of the year,
maybe not the best month,
but October is my month
because you hear laughter, sometimes sorrow
many secret comforts and a lot of dreams
about hot chocolate and hot tea
and how your Christmas will be.

Kia

ph

y, N
ich e

ll K ee

SORROW
In laughter, there is sorrow
some people are dying of the ﬂu and illness
but some people love the month Octoberbecause you can just be comfortable and sit backeating grandma’s special home made cookies
and think of when she used to make them, now not here
why cry, you know Jesus will take care of her
why cry, why cry?
STRANGEI write because her birthday just went past
how she used to put her cookies on the table
and tell the grandkids go on, dig insoon you won’t have none at all, so dig in
Love, peace, no violence, that’s what she always told me.

Giovanni

COMFORT
I just remember how we used to laugh,
have fun, comfort, when I came home from school
you used to ask me
How come you home so early?
and I’d say, it’s 3:30
Oh, I thought it was 4:55,
ha, ha, ha, ha,just laughter and comfort.

My name is Giovanni Copeland.
My name is like a star that shines,
Like a sun, andwhen I say my name,everybody can hear me shine
and when I walk down the street,the sun shines on me
and the trees and the grass and the birds
and when the sun goes down,
my name stops shining
but to me it shines all day like a star

Dearah Chappell

Giovanni Copeland

15

December
I love December, the month of Christmas,
I can sense it coming near.
When the sunrise and December 25 comes,
I just want to cheer.
But on December 24, I don’t want to got to sleep,
I just watch the moonlight because it’s a beautiful sight.
I hear footsteps coming toward my door,
Oh, it’s just my mom coming to say goodnight.
Christmas is back for another year,
I can hear the sound of bells in my ear.
The story about Santa Claus is always a mystery,
But I guess when I get older he’ll be history.
Christmas is gone, memories fade,like clouds in the sky.
I could smell Christmas coming this year,
but this time I don’t want to say goodbye.
Bryant Jenifer

Angry Mood Days
Open, mined heart; broken glass burning,
so deep, cold hearted, driven to destruction
on earth’s core, tarnish;ﬁreﬂy burns, splintersin memory, tempests raining rage.
Sores upon their faces,
the arrival of the evening star,dissonance, self-defeating liars,
toxins mellow, hurting the inner soulPlease stop the madness.
Renita Williams

16Dreamer
Beautiful, peacefulMother sleeping in the universe
my best friend
so soft and gentle
the open eye
unity in the world
a lovely home sits there thinking,dreaming.
Her people scream with terror
They yell out Stop! Stop!
The blood sinks through the soil in the tree roots
All you hear now is pow, pow, boom!
I wake up and see a man lying there
not opening one eye,but he is fading in the sky
a future father is gone, Bye bye.
Renita Williams

A . M o nt el B

Haunted Haikus

rook

s

Landmines
The kids cry and fall
They are hurt by it all, bombs
the missing leg gone.
HIV
Young women, young men
Hop to bed and then again
the clinic sees HIV.
Death
Heartbreak burns softly
Sorrow screams loudly, pain aches
death of human cries.
Holocaust
Stuffed up train reeks, smells
Shower ﬁlled with gases, burned ashes
cries out for help, scream.
Renita Williams

Ode to the Trees
Sister of the planthood
Why do they treat you that way?
Growing above peoples’ graves.
You are so strong, you canknock down anything in your way.
Cut into millions of pieces,
blood dripping so much it can make a puddle,
So heavy, it burns. It’s almost like magic.
Don’t you feel like the world is invading your space?
But we need you to make paper
we need wood for ﬁreplaces.
You are a sunrise,
you keep it cool when it’s hot
You can get elderly
to the point you have to get cut down.
Don’t you feel invisible?
Nobody knows your name, nobody cares about you.
But the world need you so much that
If you did not exist, there would be nothing to touch.
Renita Williams

17

I am, I am
I am the footsteps of tomorrow.
I am the legend of morning trumpets.
I am the secret, grave voyage.
I am departed caution.
I am the breath of a 2 month fetus.
I am a coral forbidden backpack.
also opaque eyes.
I am the bang of a souvenir drum.
I am a decent speech of a breathless man.
I am ancient ﬂutes during summertime.
I am... who I am... I am the woman
who stands above us, who breathes everyone’s air
I am, I am Renita Williams.
Renita Williams

My Kaleidoscope

Dancing
Dancing is like a fast beat to a song.
Dancing is a math problem
you’re trying to solve.
Dancing is like you’re on your own
land and you can do whatever
you want.
Dancing is a car speeding acrossthe street.
Dancing is the sound of your heart
beating fast like you’re afraid of something.
Dancing is the taste of a spicy
piece of candy.
Dancing feels like a hot bubble
bath where you can relax.
Tylia Bell

Stopping black and pink
yellow-gold and aqua roses,skipping through a star-ﬁlled ﬁeld,
turning into silver spoons and frying pans.
My octagon-shaped life is running on pink colored gas,a deer hopping by a ﬁeld of tiger-orange stemmed black-eyed susans,a rabbit with periwinkle and black polka-dots somehow,
and in some strange way, turning into cones of all colors.
Finally a turtle with a star on his shell,
and insects with a sense of pushing them toward something,
they turn into the most beautiful roses you have ever seen,
and the prettiest stars that ever gleaned.
Jasmine Murray

18

May

A dark destructive time is at hand
An illusion of a scarlet end of being
The tempest destroys all
The earth’s core, driven to destruction
Thunder is crashing through the air
Mankind is going down
Into the burning ﬁre of a ﬁreﬂy
Driven down into the abyss,
Where death is certain, the biggest fearoO all fears is ourselves
The destruction of earth is now
Fear the darkness.
Damon Keens

The Dark

a tki
yW

Kiana Murphyan

The mystery, howl
almost a blur, behind the secretrhythm of a guitar
which is a comfort, by a candle
of an exotic empire.

itt

A salty, bitter taste from nature
Flying left to right
The memories of dawn,
holding a blankness
only a slight laughter might see
The forgotten glow of a ghost
holds a secret of many disbeliefs
The ﬂight of feathers blowing backwards
beyond a hurricane of eyelids
wanting them to ﬂy away

Br

Fresh trees blossoming
Blindness beyond the horizon
Plants blooming, the sun slightly askew
The fading fall of the sun holds a dream
The fragrance of the strange, exotic mist
comes at random

The Sleeping World
The sleeping world
So lovely and peaceful
So gentle and beautiful.
The universe is different.
It wakes with no unity
The mothers are dreaming?
No, they wake up
Sometimes to a stressful life.
Doesn’t want to be home
Is so lovely, but her life isn’t
Being put under pressure
Don’t know which way to go,
Left or Right?
She doesn’t want to be here
So she leaves the universe
With one eye open
To look at the universe that is destroying itself.
Kiana Murphy

19RollercoasterMy life is a rollercoaster.
Sometimes I’m happy and sometimes I’m sad.
Sometimes I’m up and sometimes I’m down.
The thrills are sometimes like taking pills
Having to throw up, but can’t really get it out
Having to scream, but know doing that will be the wrong route
Knowing someone’s gone and you can’t bring them backKnowing that the railings and bars are the only things keeping you on track
Sometimes you’re under too much pressure and would just shut down
All of this will just make you frownby hearing the sounds
that keep you moving up and down
The sounds go cling, cling, pow
but the sounds don’t keep my uncle
from going down to the ground
Hearing the cling, cling sounds again
but it’s not the rollercoaster,
it’s the ambulance coming to get him
You should speak your mind
Never wanting to hear that cling, cling sound again
Don’t hold everything inside
but just wanting a friend
Let your insides out
to stop this rollercoaster.

Haikus: Why?

Kiana Murphy

Within a rude world
Want to come out from within
Leaving the bad outside
Eternity comeWe have been waiting too long
For the worst to comeToday we wonder
Why are blacks killing each other?
Forever death waits
The last breath of life
The wicked voyage beyond
Drags the lifeless loss
Kiana Murphy

20l–r: Brittany Wa

tk in

s, M

ar

Misty World

ya
m

Ab

du
lla h

The evolution of a misty world
Impossible morning of footsteps
So breathlessThat a ﬂute’s voice may secretly
Depart you from the fog
The eccentric sizzle of an ancient drum
Hypnotizes a trumpet
To secretly stay on beat
The loss, beyond a grave
Speaks for itself, within a speech
That no legend may hear

Think
Explore your mind, not just your brain
take the time to think of the things you can gain
when you think…
about the things in the backthe back of your mind where
you wrapped your thoughts in a box
a box with chains set on ﬁrenever to be set free.

The windswept voyage
Within a wicked prism
The glimmer of a brightly lit caution sign
Telling you
To never walk out of the evolution
Of a misty world
Kiana Murphy

Think so that you can smell your mind burningin the back of your mind,
smoking so much you can see it out your ears.
Think so much that it becomesa rollercoaster of a natural hightaking you high, higher, highest…
until it gets you to the point
where all you want to do is…
Think.
A. Montel Brooks

21

Montel Reads His Own Palm
Blinded to his own futuredoomed within his own life
growing old, impatient, and senile
as he wanders into the galaxy of nothingness
His talents are growing old
the cheese has gone badand the leaves have gone purple
in the salad that he calls his life
Beaten down and stomped on
and trampled and chokedtill the point where he wants to end it allby the slit of his arm
A. Montel Brooks

Hyperbole
I am as tall as 1,000 books stacked on
top of each other. My skin color is as brownas 2 brown crayons put together.
My hair is as long as a 50 footextension cord. My hands are as softas baby lotion.
My eyes are as big as 4 polar bears,
my feet are as long as 100 yardsticks.
My socks are as small as 3 ants.
Johnetta Simmons

Sleep
Now I’d lay me down to sleep
but no one’s there for my soul to keep
within the blackness and the light of the candle
in the back of my mind
resembling the life of a fragile fragment of ﬂesh
I have left burning the rose of my mind
petal by petal
as an angel hovers abovethat rose quivering and wonderingas the darkness in the cloudless sky takes over
A. Montel Brooks

22

Winter
M ar y aWinter—It’s the time for me
watching the snow fallhaving the miraculous feelingof just knowing that it’s coming

mA

bd u

ll a

h

Feeling—
The snow in my handbringing kids joy across the world
laughter and happinessmoonlit rooms watching movies with hot chocolate
Hearing—
The wind behind your ear
following up with an ice cold snowball
to chill your mind and bodylistening to your mother yell at you
at 8 o’clock in the morning
Montel, get outside and shovel that daggone snow!
Smelling—
The cold sweat ofwhen you’re outside playing snow footballsmelling cookies in the ovenand hot chocolate on the stove
Smelling love from familes and friends
that care for you
I wonder how that feels.
A. Montel Brooks

PrinceArrogance beyond belief, the child of greatness
Royalty among degeneracy,
Instead of the shiny gold and silver
He wilds out with a color of his choosing
Puts his power to use in sinful ways
Kiss the royal rings, as he says
Besides all hail him, it’s
Awww man, it’s him
A crown of thorns, robe of ﬁreand advisors twenty deep
He never ﬁghts his own battle,
but his people bring that heatStrength of a million
within a whisper of his voice
His father will pass down
the prize of his choice
A. Montel Brooks

23

Sleep
Before I sleep, I think ofWhat will happen the next day
Light is what I see,The burning candle,
Guarding a cloudless sky
The royal corners of my room,
Providing endless darkness
And a secret door ﬁlled with amazing things
Outcropping of shadows on my window
Trees are scare for the time being
My eyes close and I drift into dreamland

Unfinished
July is a heated summer month.
I feel the heat radiating on my skin.
It burns my body like a volcano.
I don’t hear a silent moonlightwhen the sun goes down into a secretalmost secluded place
Evening is a neon eyelid
ﬁlled with the sounds of an empire
I see a child…

Damon Kee

Damon Kee

Destruction
I am a cup of death
Filled to the top with hatred
The anger boiling inside of me
Like a kettle of hot water
It rages like a black tornado
Destroying everything in its path
My red hot angry knife
Slices the last bit of light and love
The darkness covers everything
And chokes the life out of life itself
Red and black covers all the earth
With slaughter and murder
Destruction is my name andThat is what I am
Damon Kee

What did I say?
My world is monochromatic
In black I see an abyss of anonymous thirst
A pack of newborn prophecies to be revealed
My universe is a legacy of wisdom where I am kingMy cursed world is a gift for people
Who understand what life is all about
The things are complicated, so
Now
What did I say?
Damon Kee24

I am trying not to be what I think I am
hiding every day from people, not thinking I’m a man.
I am probably a superstar inside, trying to hidefrom paparazzi who try to make who I am.
I guess I’m just paranoid because people pass me bystaring like I’m not there and thinking I’m not nice.

Ga

I am?
br

le
i el

Ma

rtin

Come to think of it, who says I can’t make myself out to be
who I want everyone to be, just like me?
I am the person who is transparent, stuck in a verse like thistrying to be everyone else.
Well, if that’s true, I try too hard
to be a carved monkey in that monkey suit.
If that’s true, I am the moon, full of no emotions
looking at the one guy everyone and me tries to be.
I am trying to hide, trying to hide with everyone
and I’m dressed and hidden into what you’re doing
and what’s new, hey, but if life was the same
who would be the leader, tough guy everyone follows
in the fast cars, superstars,
and his kid who is going to be just like him
not because he’s good, but because he’s cool in school
and all the kids he knows are just like him.
I am exactly who that guy is, or him, or her,
Just like you.
Luqman AbdullahHouse Kid
I’m a house kid,
never touched by the outside world
a little late, if not for the TV
no one asks if I want to go out or
to take out the trash till I get readyyep, just sitting in a basket of clothes
until ﬁnally my parents grow old
and throw me out unprotected and naked
for the corruption andlife of a real man andthey will kill and destroy that house boy
now that is the reason
I don’t think of the real world of murdersof every house boy ormomma’s boy, just like megetting an expiration datejust to be the bob or bill or catherinethat murders my house kid
Luqman Abdullah

25

All over the inside of me
All over the inside of me
it seems empty andfull of organs
all over the inside of me are
no rooms for friends or emotions
only one emotion, of distrustthat leads into a fake senseof being on a cliff
with a hill over top of
every false person or blade of grass.
The only one that follows what I dois my shadow
which is also beneath me
all the arrogance of leaves
and birds hanging off of me
But I can’t survive without themthe only people it can’t overcome are not there
and it is all overthe inside of me
Luqman Abdullah

Inside the body
Atom in the body, descending through the human
doing impossible missions, reaching the heartpassing through the throat
the foggy organ that plays like a symphony
including ﬂutes, trumpets, and drums.
This is the way to the heart:
Saying the secret password
and buying a souvenir by the arterythat looks like a prism
Thus get going through the bodywhen it breathes out, the body rests
till the morning, till doing
his wicked journey again.
Jamal Buggs

26

I read my palm
I wake up in the morning
quarter to ten
waking like I was fromdawn of the dead.
I got in my car
did the same thing every day
had no future.
Life didn’t seem that great
blinded by the work life
Like rats eating at cheese
they eat and eat
it’s gonna run out eventually
Once it does, I’ll be doomed
And see the lightthat my job ain’t rightIt’s too late,running from my own fate
I might be young
but I’m not as senile as they think
Once you’re born, you’re gonna blink.
And once I do, I’ll realize
life doesn’t go in a straight line
They tell me that zombies are a myth
but the things I’ve seen, it’s true as this.
Luqman Abdullah

r

ab

M ar

tin, Brittany Watkins

Breathless

l–

:G

lle
rie

I feel like I’ve been ﬂooded
with all the ancient history
held inside
I follow my footsteps
in a repeated form,
the sound of an off-beat trumpet
with a pair of busted drums I heard

My Shadow
My shadow wears a blue shirt and leopard shoes.
She has a red hat and she knows everything.
Her hair is black and brown.
She loves to talk to me.
I love to talk to her.
My shadow does not like to wear dresses
because she thinks it looks ugly.
My shadow likes to look at people.
When we play on the playground, we have so much fun.
She lives in me.
She loves people and she loves my family too.
My shadow is nice and good to.
My shadow does not like bad people.
My shadow likes to do things with me.
My shadow is a ghost.
Stelita BetterI pictured myself as grave material
what a bad loss
so I use my past as an unﬁnished story,
so I depart from that
I feel wicked
It’s impossible, it’s like a ﬁlthy hurt
I am without a breath, almost breathless.
Danielle Stover

Loving Moment
I would go out when the sin diesand go see some people
get into a stream of water with cleaning products
I would write something in a secret compartment
outcropping the ﬂoor with my guards
and back-up angels that shield me from the dark lightinto the summer, allowing me to sleep
having a loving moment
Jamal Buggs

27

More than you think
My brain is this bridge with deep thoughts
My heart is the trees, used a lot
The water is my eyes, farther than you can see
Saying, “There is more to me than you think.”
The water’s reﬂections are my soul.
The black sky is dark emotions I show
And the little land is what’s hidden about me
Saying, “You don’t know that much about me.”Maryum Abdullah

Alliteration
A vivid vapor comes to my nose
while thecool air covers my face, colors
all around, like black and gold
Vicious and vilefootball players surround me
Running away fromthe dangerous destructive players
I ﬁnd a hole big enough for me to ﬁt
I break away, bouncing through the hole
350 yards total,
uh no, said the players
Touchdown, game winning point.
Terry Bennett

Ode to the Moon
The brightness that lights up the stars
centered in the middle with ostentation
Vivid as it is exquisite, surrounded by
its azure admirers. The night sky.
It is a sculpture of brilliance,
created by no human.
The way it glows, blinds us, it cannot bereached. For it is an untouchable beauty.
The moon remains young, and still pretty,
notorious and wondrous every night.
Maryum Abdullah

Ode to the Moon
Twin of the sun
light for the sky
beside the stars
and has many scars
Without its luminous light
it would be a lunar eclipse
With the light you shine off
you give us all a favor
We all travel safely in the night
Bright like the sunand nice to my sight.
Marché Shields

28

I’m stuck at the bottom, but I want to be at the top
It feels as though there’s no way
so I guess I should stop everything
It’s so cold and rocky, I wonder if I get there
will they like me?
It’s such an emotional whirlwind
wondering if I’ll ever ﬁt in
I don’t care about them, that’s the thing
It’s who I wanna bethat makes me wanna scream
I wanna be at the top of the mountainwithout getting trapped in an avalancheWill I make it? I don’t know.
I’m so scared and it’s so cold.
I’m scared to face them at the top
I wish I could put my life on hold.
Nefertearia Crawley

t op

Where I wanna be
:

M
A.

e
o nt

oo ks; bl Brottom, Dam

on K

ee

Colors
Sepia
Mold,
Spreading around breadSmelling like stinking cheese.

Dewayne reads his own palm
As he predicts, his grandmother’s going blind
She gets cataracts and he leaves his mind
His feelings are tossed, like an old country saladyeah, with cheese, and as he begs please,
Lord God, give her her eyesight backbecause I don’t want my grandma to beblind to cataracts.
She helps me to plan out my future
Lord God, I really don’t want to lose her.
Tionna Wade

Fuchsia
Night sky,
Setting on a beachReﬂecting light on the ocean
Emerald
Diamond ring,
Sparkling while waiting in its box
Surprising people with a smile
VioletLeather jacket
Making people stop and stare
Glaring at them with evil eyes.
Jessica Smoot29

The Great Life
Well, mom,
Let me tell you
Life for me has been like a sunset on the beach.
Sometimes it’s hard, but I’ll just keep on going.
My life had some dark times, but as I turned aroundthe morning light hit me.
All of the roses and daisies are blooming,and the rain is coming down so fast,
but pure, and the satin sheets cover my heartas I think about you at night
The love I have for other people is bare
My love for you will last for a lifetime
There’s only one way you can go, and that’s up,
looking at the sky.
Renita Williams

December
December, laughter is in the air
and we’re feeling good,
because it’s Christmas Day.
We opened gifts and ragged appliances
but forgot about the lost childknocking on the door
asking for some more.
Before that night, a ghost
walked through my house with a candle lightthinking that she was the boss of my house.
My eyelids opened and I smelled
the peach fragrance of exotic soap.
The blindness ofa lonely guitar, feeling sorrow
because its strings won’t pluck a note right.
A mystery is not yet solved,
but the smooth hurricane comes backward
hitting the island.
The blankness on the sheet of paper,
wanting a pen to hit it.
December is the best.
Shamia House30

Jumping, running, playing
in a ﬁeld full of daisies.
Wishing and watching earrings on sale
hoping they’ll be hanging from your ear.
Sleeping for hours,
dreaming of what could be
instead of what is.
Bugs biting, wood cutting,taking every piece of feeling you have.
Dancing the night always,
because you know what you want in life.
Leaves falling from trees dying,wishing they had nine lives;
Dogs barking, cheetahs attacking,S’s falling in threes.
Homeless peoples’ teeth rotting
because they haveno money to buy a toothbrush.
Wolves protecting their young.
Feeling lonely at school
because people think you’re square.
What if you had a yellow,
orange, tan, white and purple rose?
Having to imagine the future, it’s hard, isn’t it?
But the life you live will always have adventures.

M

Kaleidoscope
o

e
na

Sm

ith

Shamia House

The Angry Sea
As pretty as the sea issomething’s always being thrown into it.
Just like a whirlpool of bills
sucking up the best credit cards
you want the most,or like banana peels
being washed away in its divine waves.
Legends of trash
being polluted into its happiness
The sea’s unhappy ways are getting angry,
so just like the stopper, it holds everything you loveaway and you never see them anymore.
Shamia House31

Shamia Reads Her Own Palm
Sometimes she’s blind.
Sometimes she spills
Slowly drinking a healthy apple smoothie
I dream of what my senile ages are going to be like.
My future is what is in me,
And always on my mind.
I never forget the talent in me.
When I think of cheese,
I think of the sun that’s probably
Going to burst in a million pieces
In about 3 billion years.
I think of books I’ve readAnd see whether they’re myths.
Is that what I wanna believe?
I’m insouciant when I get yelled at
Cause when I do, it makes me stronger.
When look at a salad, I think of the lettuce
Which reminds me of the fresh green grass
Or the carrots and the purple cabbage.
I wonder when the rainbow is gonna appear.
The tower that doomed me inside
my lifeis what I have, and I don’t plan on wasting it.
Shamia House

Falling Star
A little bit of life swiping victory in the air
while she screams for the children to stop
we shoot, we score, as the lesson of life falls
to a deepened hole of anxiousness and anger
She screams! We cheer!
As her voice goes hoarse,
we feel as good as any rising star
As any rising star, she screams
the last little breath she can spit
until no longer can we hear her
She’s drowning in thatdeepened hole of anxiousness
and sickened emotions
Can I be appreciated for onceis the last thing she could say
before the hole of deepened thoughtsof emotionof unappreciation.
James Tindle

32

April—Its smooth fragrance,
Its random howl

Xa

April

v ie

r, B

n
n yo

ka S

i m pki ns

I can hear the fascination in her tone
By the silent guitar
And the fading laughter
In the distance.
I can see the gathering
Of the crimson wings
Beating their exotic colored rhythm
The glow in their moonlit eyes
The risen dawn or
The ghostly blankness
That comforts my shadow.
I can feel the unwritten thermal
Beneath my ragged unstable skeleton
Falling under the rain
Pouring down,
Breaking my every bone.
James Tindle

Every Definition Entry (Tree)
Every branch means a new entry.
A new deﬁnition, an unspoken word.
No moaning, just another pageAnd another night of vocabulary words.
A bush is a meaningless bush,
But a branch is a new path,
A forgotten shadow, a neon hope.
James Tindle

UntitledThrough…
a thought, a hole, a bittersweet memory,a spiked collar, a yellow boy running down the hall,
chains galore, transmutations circle andiPods, Mohawks and tattoos carved into his right arm
black pants, red and black ﬁngernails, mascara,
lip balm, black sugar, barbed wireand dark sunglasses, and backthrougha wired fenceout an open door and on
to a chain wired with spikes and dubs.
James Tindle

33

CrimsonValley of Death

CrimsonChain
Tying down the deep desires
Scratching the glass stops

As I walk through the valleyof the shadow of death
it is peacefuluntil an accident

Fuchsia
Cloak
Draping the everlasting sun
Burning the tresses of our culture

As maximum teardrops fall
I can’t believe it
I see the black rainbow
I weep and weep
The air blows me hard
My spirit decays
My insides shine
but I refuse to go

Ochre
Flower (rose)
Blooming from a sea of lilies
Mingled in with colorless candles
Ivory
Slipper
Mooning the naked legs
Scraping the fancy carpet

As I see a dark light
my vision has spoken to me
It is my time
Devon Hudson

LavenderDress
Covering the bare woman
Forming a whole new fashion
Vermillion
Pen
Filling every line of my paper
Scratching down my every thought.
James Tindle

From Sunrise to Sunset
Orange birds chirping outside my window
Voices to sing with symphonyfrom the geometric song
A bell to ring heaven and earth
The pink and yellow sunshine slowly risingand falling from the ﬁery cloud
Watered with tears
The wind of the world with peaceful warring
Like dancing on the moon blinded by beauty
I am dining among stars, so graceful in number
Into a bittersweet memory.
Tempest Jackson

34

e rs

es

Sa

nd

Ja m

It is a silent storm,
the soothing noise of rain
against my window,
the sight of lightning
across the late night sky.
I open my window to smell
the scent of the rain.
As I walk back to my bed
I think about
how long the storm will last;
I go to sleep and when I wake up
the storm has passed.

uSilent Storm

Jevin Hampton

PathosMy Family
I’ve known my family. I’ve known themlong enough to tell that they have
deep
dark
secrets
and no one can tell me otherwise.
My family businessstayswithme,
nobody else. I’ve known them too long to
bring
them
down.
I know when my mom or relative’s notplaying when they say, “Focus on yourwork
and be a young lady”
Shainairie Jones

He is running out of breath
Low oxygen
So small to do anything
Yet so smart to think
As I held something so precious
With such innocence
Mom’s gone, left alone
Wondering how I have held
Someone that’s alone
So frail with brown eyes
Wondering how I could see
Someone all alone
The person who may be a baby
Is a reﬂection of me
He is my newborn yet to comeBut for now I’m all alone
Joylin Yates

35

Like Dancing on the Moon
Dancing on the moon will be a dream come true.
The moon brings light in darkness.
When the moon rises, sometimes colors of pink
and yellow sunshine appear,a red line in a blue sky.
When the DJ’s record scratches of musicsometimes you can hear the bell ring
between heaven and earth
while dancing on the moon.
Jakeia Steele

Commander-in-Chief

Untitled
My father used to pick me up
Throw me in the air
My mother had just got off work
At home in Atlanta
Angry, saying“Your father is dead”
I cried and cried
Was he really gone?
“Yes.”
He vanished into the night
They searched and searchedAnd ﬁnally found him
Shot, on a curb until 1:45 a.m.
I am missing him every day.
Evan Phoenix

36

I come on stage
To tell the truth
But I lie to everybody
When I leave the stage.
I won the election twice
And I sent Americans to Iraq
So they could die
While I stay alive.
Dawayne Singleton

A New Republic
ila

ni

Cl

ay

Me

I was a powerful black man in Montgomery
All the white people hated meSome loved me
I marched for civil rights for all black people
One of my civil rights companions is Rosa Parks
She helped me end and start the bus boycott
They used to beat on us and wet us
with the water hose
We had separate schools but one day
we will all become one
Because one day we will all be free.
Free at last, free at lastThank God Almighty, we are free at last.
Jemaroco Spencer

Cool FireA ﬁre is hot when you’re cold
A ﬁre is cool throughout the snow
It’s like a breath of smooth windThat you can’t hate
Cool ﬁre is ﬁre with lots of faith
I love the warm and sunny heat
Cool ﬁre is like ﬁre that can’t be beatIt’s one-on-one weather
Like heat and wind put together.
LeQuonte Rhones

A Stranger
Low elevation means a poor person with no life. They liveon the streets with no roof over their head. The weight ofweakness is on the person whose life is lonely and short.
I see him every day on the streets asking people formoney. I always wanted to know why a red line is in
the blue sky. But in the stranger’s eyes I see him frozen
in a cold world yet leaping for joy.
Lathan Armstead37

A School Desk
It is short
Not very tall
It has four legs
Just like a dog
I put books in its mouth
To save them for school
My, oh my
I didn’t think a desk was so cool.
Cameron Hilliard

Close Your Eyes

The Struggle
Today is the day
She is happy, cheerful as can be
But she must do things to earn it
She must wash the beast of dirt
Cut the ﬁery plains
And it’s hard
She’s dying of thirstAnd starving for fun
But she must work until her body
Breaks down
The hours passed, at 2:57
She is done for the day
And happy as can be
But when she goes to get her prize
She realizes that the clock was wrong
And now her last chance for fun is gone.
Destiny Myles

I can smell the new beginning
And feel the old going away
I can taste the great life coming right at me
Then I hear nothing
The sound of silence
Then a loud boom out of nowhereThings start to move quickly
I get scared and realize
It was only my imagination
Kiauna Hamilton

My Friend
When I’m with him, I feel safe
His hazel eyes sparkle in the dark
His teeth are sharp like a shark
With golden fur
He’s warmer than the summer
He’s like my guardian angel
Evan Phoenix

38

K

ia n

a

hy, N

ic hell K ee, Sh an n o

nA

llen

l –r

To question God on a journey with no path
Searching for answers with such emancipated hands
And a poor uplifted soul staring at the delicate rock
Beside the white rose
Lost in mind, lost in self
Wondering has she ever felt:

Confused Is Sherp
Mu

The bittersweet memory makes it hardTo focus
The weight of weakness won’t go away
Like red dirt and black sandLife comes and will certainly go
Deep down she knows something is missing
But what?
Time awaits—she’s still questioning God
As she ﬁnishes her journey she sees a man
Blinded by beauty into her headNot until I ﬁnd my inner soul
She thinks
Days go by—as she drowns with glory
She imagines dancing on the moon
She loves herself
A bell to ring heaven and earth“Let justice rejoice,” says she
While dining among the stars
She whispers, “I can ﬁnally be free”
Joylin Yates

Shadow
My shadow, my black
shadow why are
you so scary golden.
I wonder is
ink blacker
than my shadow
I stand to shiver.
My shadow
why are you
so quiet you
answered with body
movement.
I wonderwhat doshadows look
like with goldenand silver chains.
Antoinette Better

39

hArtworks featured writer

Naomi Ayala

Naomi Ayala works as an education and evaluation consultant, freelance technical writer, and teacher and,
until recently, she served as a Visiting Humanities Scholar for Hermana a Hermana/Sister to Sister.
She is the author of two books of poetry, Wild Animals on the Moon (Curbstone Press, 1997), andThis Side of Early (Curbstone Press, 2008).
Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals; most recently in Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Saranac
Review, Hostos Review/Revista Hostoniana, MARGIN: Exploring Modern Magical Realism, Saheb
Ghalam Daily (Afghanistan), Gargoyle, and Tiger Tail; and in several anthologies of contemporary
Latino writing, including Boriquén to Diasporican: Puerto Rican Poetry from Aboriginal Times to the
New Millenium (University of Wisconsin Press, WI, 2005), Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino
Literature (Longman, 2006), and First Flight: 24 Latino Poets (University of Arizona Press, 2006).
Naomi Ayala’s translations of poetry have appeared both in the U.S. and Switzerland, and she has
reviewed books for Feminist Teacher and The Washington Post’s Book World. She has also been therecipient of several awards and honors, and of two artists’ fellowships from the D.C. Commission on
the Arts and Humanities. She lives in Washington, DC.
On Monday, December 4, Ms. Ayala met with students in the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop’s afterschool program to read and discuss her work.

Above left: Luqman Abdullah; Above center: Naomi Ayala

40

Naomi Ayala: First, let me tell you that I’ve been a writer for a very long time. I started

writing when I was young, around twelve years old, the same age
many of you are now. To me this is important because I think that around your age you know
exactly what you want and you know your dreams. Your dreams are important—you don’t have to be acertain age to have them. They don’t have to be realistic all the time, they can seem impossible, and you canstill have them and this is okay. So, I want to start with a poem called “Immigrant’s Voice”

I heard an immigrant 's voice.
It rubbed the walls of downtown buildings clean,
wiped the glass of steamy truckstop windows with its breath& o.d.'d on caffeine& cigarettes dawns before work.
It cleared a fog in Januarywith its whistle in its jeans.
It climbed the ﬂagless pole on the Green & shouted,
itself amast recitedfrom the dollar
e pluribus unum e pluribus unum.
It prayed in front of the gatesof Union Trust,
climbed city hall steps, kneecaps to concreteduring unemployment& asked the mayor, please, a shot of whiskey
or dope, or a dollar, a mighty dollar.
It cut open its forearm six inches
at his machine operator's job
cutting steelhis words deep-blue-purple
but he had to be grateful,
had to be gratefulfor the work.
It pounded on its lover's breast,
this voice
demanding where is the dream?
where is the dream?

Brujo No. 28 forDrawing Your Ancestors
Face it.
This here’s about loss
and regaining
what’s been lost.
Call your spirit back.
What is the birthingsong you need?
The secret vow?
If your day is a drum,
drum. The rest
is about dancing.

41

It broke into tears at public urinals& spit on statues on the way
homeuntil sweat poured
from the contourof their stories.
It gargled the news
nights after suppertime& crawled shivering into its sleep.
What sleep there could be.
What dreams.

Shannon: How did you feel about the poem?
NA: When I wrote this poem, I had a whole lot of things to say about what it’s like to be an

immigrant. And I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it, so instead I wrote a poem about a voice,and the voice became all these people I was trying to represent. It was kind of a hard thing to do. And I felt
good that I was able to do it, because when I write, even to this day—I’ve been writing for so long you think
you can do anything, which I could. We all can do whatever we can do, right? But you don’t know for sure
until you get it done. So that’s a good feeling, that you can do something that you can imagine in your head.

Jamal: What does the poem mean?
NA: A poem sometimes—and this is good—is going to mean different things to different people. Like thegeneral idea, everybody will get it, but it will mean particular things to different people. I don’t want to tell
you what it means because it’s like, if you were getting a surprise, and I’d tell you what the surprise is before
you open it.

Jamal: I like that better.

(Laughter)
NA: It’s also exciting to guess or to ﬁnd out. Can somebody tell me your general idea of what you think, andthere’s no wrong answer, because that’s what it means to you as a person. It’s not a math problem, where one
plus two will have to equal three. So, what did you see in this poem? What did you hear?

Jamal: Immigrants asking for whiskey?
NA: Aha, you heard that. What else did you hear?
Shamia: Dreams.

42

Above photo, l–r: Shambriel Metts, Yasmin Jones, Shannon Allen, James Saunders, Naomi Ayala,
Jamal Buggs, Danielle Blake, Nichell Kee, Shamia House, Kiana Murphy, Wendie Thomas, India Bell

NA: Asking for dreams? Anything else you heard? Anything that sticks out?
Jamal: That Spanish word you said? E Pluribus Unum?
NA: That’s an interesting phrase, it’s actually Latin. Can somebody tell me what that means? You’ve seen
it—you’ve had it in your pocket.

Yasmin: Money?
NA: Yes, it’s written on money. (After much discussion) It’s the motto of the United States, it means,“From many, one.” Any other ideas about what this poem might mean?

Jamal: I guess it’s about people who come to the United States having dreams, and their dreams not
coming true.

NA: Yes, that’s the main idea of the poem. And you get there and people tell you you’re going to get thisdream, and you get to this place and there isn’t a dream. It didn’t exist. Everybody knows what that feels like,right? Do you have any more questions?

Shannon: What is your worst fear?
NA: Oh, you are good, aren’t you? Do you do this to people all the time? I really have a great deal of respect
for people like that, who’ll ask a question like that. What is my worst fear? It’s not death. I am at peace with mydeath. I think when I became a brave person in my life, from all the things I had to overcome, I decided thatthe worst thing that people can do to you is hold your death over you—you could be tortured and then you
could die, and all your worst nightmares—then people will try to oppress you, to enslave you, to force you to do
things against your will, to take things from you, whether it’s your pride, or your dignity, or your body, or yourmoney, or whatever you want. In the end, the worst that can happen is that you die. That’s our worst nightmare,so if you’re not afraid of your death, can somebody do anything to you that you don’t want them to do?
So I’m not afraid of death, I’m afraid sometimes of getting lost, but inside myself, like in my journey as a

I like to get lost for fun

person. Not getting lost physically, because. (Laughter) I do, I love
adventures. Like in the woods, I’ve gotten lost—sometimes the most for, like, ten hours, and not been able
to get out. And that was scary. I don’t know—can I get back to you on that? Oh, and cockroaches for sure. If
there’s a cockroach anywhere nearby, I ﬂip out, I scream; I’m a complete chicken. Just the look of it, it looking
at me, the antenna, it moving where it wants to move. I love bugs, I don’t have any problem with bugs, but I do
have a problem with cockroaches. I have actually decided to get over my fear so I wrote them a poem this year,
I wrote two roach poems.

Jamal: Does “la cucaracha” mean cockroach?
NA: Yes. It’s kind of like a joke, that song. It comes from a stereotype—Latinos used to be called roaches,
Puerto Ricans in particular. So it plays off of that. But the song is, I believe, Mexican.
(Jamal reads one of Naomi’s poems aloud)

NA: What a great honor. Thank you so much. You did a great job. So what about this poem, do
you have any questions about this poem?

James: What’s your favorite image in the poem?

43

NA: “My history is glass I walk on with my soul on ﬁre.” I’m proud of that.
If you can imagine, it must be a painful history—your soul’s on ﬁre and you’re walking on broken glass. That’s
like two major things going on at the same time, to me that captured how I felt. The glass is itself your history
being broken. I think, when you’re trying to ﬁgure out what your history is, it’s like your personal history,
your people’s history. You’re putting all this stuff together. Some people will tell you “This is your people’s
history, it belongs to you.” Right? But your people’s history is also your family’s history, it’s also your own
personal history, all that stuff mixed together.
And then you get the history you read in books, which isn’t always accurate, and you’re piecing all thesethings together, but your history is also what you see of your inheritance. For me, it’s the stuff I’ve seen
Latinos go through, and women. In this poem I’m talking particularly about women. And somehow, it’s 2006
and we’re still living part of our history that the people who came before us lived, right? And sometimes thatreally hurts. And it’s surprising that we still have to go through that same history in our lives. To me, thatwas like walking on glass. But I’m always putting it back together, it was this poem for me to tell myself get it
together—like put it back. It’s empowering. You feel good, and strong, and courageous when you can bringthose pieces back. Or you can be that somebody who sits around and just sees broken glass. And just stareat the broken glass, and you just keep stepping on it and bleeding. What do you do with that? How do you
move on from that?

“learning to be free.”For me, an important part of this poem was that
Do you think anybody
needs to learn to be free? I think we all do. I think we get used to being in boxes and put in places, andbecause we’re used to it, we don’t realize it. And when we start getting out a little bit, then we realize, oh,
I’m inside a box. And the more you step out, you see how big the box is, and the box behind you is like thishuge building, and that’s where you’ve been. You have to learn to get out of it. I think your history and yourdetermination help you do that. Where are you? You have to know where you are, so that you can go where
you want to be. Other questions?

James: As a young writer, I already know that writing won’t be the most lucrative career. Do you thinkthat your passion for it makes up for not having all the money in the world?

NA: I think wealth is a very subjective thing. I think that wealth is what you think wealth is. And everybody
thinks wealth is very different things. Wealth isn’t just money. To me it’s like your health, your joy. I know
people who are monetarily wealthy, and they’re not very happy people. For me, wealth is a balance of many

If you dowhat makes you happy, you will draw happy things to you. From thethings. So, I don’t look at as a sacriﬁce, I look at it as an investment. I like being happy.

time I was your age, I couldn’t think of doing things that made me unhappy. Life was pretty unhappy for me
already. And I’m kind of glad because it made me learn really fast that that’s not what I wanted, that I wanted
to be happy. Happiness comes from inside. I love learning more than anything. I like writing because I could

I don’t like to be bored.

do it forever and still be learning. I don’t get bored.
That’s it! That’s mygreatest fear in the whole wide world, to be bored! I feel like I’m not living life when I’m bored. It’s the mosthorrible thing in the world, that’s what I’m afraid of. And I think I could write poetry for the rest of my lifeand not be bored. When you do what you love, the rest will follow. I really do believe that.

44

POEMS BY NAOMI AYALA

Magnolia

Hole

You areOne morning they dig up the sidewalk and leave.

another planet’s daughter.

No sign of the truck,a he-she, a different kindof Aphrodite,in me my own woman
placed on my handwhen I expected
a weighty river stone.

only the large
dark shadow digging and digging,piling up sludge with a hand shovel
beside the only tree.
Two o’clock I come by
and he’s slumbering in the grass beside rat holes.
Three and he’s stretched across a jagged stonewall,

You smell like sleep walking

folded hands tucked beneath one ear –at the edge of the world

a beautiful young boy smiling,

before dawn,

not the heavy, large shadow who can’t breathe.

a sip of water,

Four-thirty and the August heattakes one down here.

will mean even morewhen I am old –hair peering from my nostrils,

He’s pulled up an elbow joint
some three feet round.
At seven I head home for the night,

a moustachepass the fresh gravel mound,well-deﬁned and dark –a soft footprint near the manhole
like the “x” abuelo would place beside his namearching to kiss the ground

all the years he couldn’t write.

before I leave,
one with bones,
one with ﬂowers.

Previously appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, andSahed Ghalam Daily (Afganistan).

Previously appeared in Saranac Review.

45

Fire
Fire is deadly
ﬁre is a life
saver. Firecan burn you.
It can keep you warm
when you’re
stranded in the
middle ofno where.
Fire can turna dream houseinto a pileof ashes. Firecan keep yourdream warm
as freshtoast.
Clas Duncan

My House
Big as the planet Jupiter, my housestands tall as a tree of youth. Beautiful
as an angel, wider than a football stadium.
My house stands in that place of my own,a place I will never be alone. My home.
Colletta Paylor

A Poem for Myself
I was born in Washington
DC. I was born black in
DC. I walked barefooted
on the concrete, butwhen I reached theage of 5, I moved to
Maryland. I left on
a Friday evening. I was
mad because I
knew I was goingto miss my friend
the day we was moving
I was talking on thephone outside, sitting on
the steps.
I done strolled throughVirginia, Pennsylvania and
New Jersey
Going back to Maryland
to stay with my friends.
Going back to Maryland
to stay with my friends.
Ashley Stevenson

46

hom

eT
Wend
i

The hood of S.E.
like others the only J.O.B.
that can be found is on
the corner.

as

S.E. Congress Heights

Where people canget lit up for stealinga dipper, or something
simple such as crack
or cocaine.
Where you are achild one day and a man
another, thinking you go hard
just because you shot someone
or if you had your ﬁrst
puff of weed.
Jamal Clark

I Am
I am a sprout or even a seed
I am a ﬂower growing between.
I am a child of a family
that loves me
I am an inspiration
I am an inspirer
I am a person ofmany things

Poem

But soon as I want to be anything

I think a poem is like the President
he do what he feel, a poem expresses
what you feel.

I will be a whistle in thebreezeAmber Williams

forget it, I am just me.
Devonte Walker

47

A Poem for Myself(or blues for a North Carolina boy)
I was born in North Carolina;
I was only a toddler.
Smelling cigs and weed when I wake up.
The smell from my cousin’s room.
Then my family and I left that place.
We ﬁnally came to DC
My ﬁrst school I attended was the X
From DC to Maryland.
From Maryland to DC.
The we ﬁnally stayed in Congress Park.
My family lived around there,
shooting mostly every night.
Since I was 1-13
8 people already killed around here my hood.
That’s where I was born and what hood I livein right now. Congress Park
Smoking crack selling weed
Sold heads drinking so much they can’t evenbreathe.
That’s where I live, the park, and you can’t stop me.
Trevon Jackson

Waking Up, Unity
Sleeping peacefully, wake up
opening my eyes, ﬁrst dreaming
looking out my window
looking at the universe
Hearing my mother’s lovely
gentle voice, seeing my
beautiful room and thinking of
the world
and what I will
be doing next, one eye open in
my home I am…
dreaming.
Markiya Davis

48

n

nn

on

lle

S ha

shoes are uniquewondrous like magicso exquisite, they light up my day
they are like sculptures in my closet
so numerous and heavy
during the summer, so comfortableshoes are beautiful
cozy and warm in the winterall different colors
blue, black, red and more
so many outﬁts you can style them foras many as words spoken for poetryA

an ode to shoes

Kiera Coleman

Untitled
My Ode to Pink
Why is pink disrespected?
Is it the way it is feminine or
the way it makes you look little?
Whatever the reason is, it
should be respected more than blue.
Pink makes me feel amazingly fun or goofy.
Blue makes me feel sad. Pink keeps me
calm and laughing. Blue is rowdy
and makes me mad.

the bull is trying to ﬁght a
blazing rose blocking his pathdiamonds are being formed by
the lionclaws cutting through cubes,
running until the horns of thebull just become dark red,then a great white shark
comes with a mind swept of
impossible odds
Bruce Gibson

Pink makes me happy when
I’m sad and brightens my day.
Pink makes me lightweightin the sky. When I look at you,pink, it’s like magic in my eye.
I come down from the clouds
and fall on my pink plush pillow
and my ﬂuffy pink bed.
So to whomever disrespects
my pink, just take one minute to think.
Shambriel Metts

49

My Crazy Friend
She sometimes feels unappreciated.
She has a complexion of caramel
brown.
But, it’s not her looks, it’s her
personality.
Inside she’s like a sister,
we stick together, like cling.
She is silly in three different
kinds of ways.
She sometimes smiles, her cheeks
puff up like cotton balls.
When she is sad, she leans on me
and says she has a problem.
When somebody passed in her family,
she shivered and cried the blues.
I tell her it will be all right.
They will walk God’s path,He will lift them up andthey are in a better place.
Keyosha Richardson

Firefly
I saw a bright light in the sky.
My memory said do not kill it.
But I did it anyway.
And I reigned over the world and
I was in charge of the world.
Then, I was full of wrathand destroyed the world.
Jada Brooks

Mother
Oh lovely motherthat sleeps so long at homewhile she rests her feet.
How peaceful she looks
while I walk around the house
wondering when my mother isgoing to wake up. But, as I wait
I lie down and start dreaming
about the universe, I don’t know why.
I go out in the world, I am scared and by myself.
But don’t know why.
As I wake up again, I hear a noise.
I go to my mother as fast as I can.
I am standing over her, I gently checkto see if she is breathing. I go in the bathroom,
I look at myself in the mirror and say,
I am beautiful, I am beautiful, I am beautiful.
I close my eyes for a minute,
I open my eyes nice and slow,
I turn around and my mother is therewith her eyes open and I know
she is alive and we are unity.
Wendie Thomas

50

ll K

N ic hepeople running jumping
a circle of tulips ﬂying in thewind, oak leaves ﬂy in thestorm as trees blow andform into octagons
lions and monkeys andturtles swarm in thewind like a rhinoceros
trying to bum
rush everything I see,visions of xboxes
playstations ﬂying
as clouds form tornados

eeKatrinaDeshaun Williams

Open Mind
Linda Reads Her Own Palm
Life is blind.
This may be a myth to you
but true to me. Doomed like acarrot in a salad, as if everyone looks
insouciant while I struggle for relief
empty as a juice box, which lies in myfuture. I am now senile, I don’t
remember the smell of cheese.
Life is blind because you don’t know
what’s going to happen. Doomed like acarrot. This phrase knows how it feels
to be in debt. Insouciant eyes, lookbut don’t help. I’m thirsty for wealththat can ﬁt in my hand. I feel old
like I can’t do it myself. My
senses are gone, left without any help.

My open mind has 9 planets
the stars, moon and the sun.
But it’s kinda cold andit has no gravity.
So in other words, my words
are harsh and they only ﬂoat in the air.
But only one star shines so brightly.
Well that means my open mind might
not be as nice as my 9th planet
and the 9th planet is sensitive and caring.
It might shine so brightly but it
doesn’t get any attention.
So when the meteor shower hits,
I really don’t care unless it hits
someone I love.
You know what? My open mind
isn’t so good, nope,
not so good at all.
Tierra Thornton

Ashley Cooper

51

Ode to Candy
Oh candy, youbright and beautiful
thing! You brain tease
the minds. You’re sweet,
sour, tasteless. But
you tend to be an
addiction for some.
Oh candy, sweet sweet
candy! When I’m down,
you’re up. You brighten myday. Teachers, parents,
and dentists don’t understandthat I can’t get enoughof you before and afterand in between breakfast,
lunch and dinner. This is
my ode to candy, my
sweet
sweet
candy!
Tierra Thornton

Being 19 years old
I don’t know what it is like to be 19.
But I really want to be 19.
I mean, it’s the best.
You’re not underage, old enoughto live by yourself. You’re able to drive,
get a job, have privacy, no curfew.
You would have your own rules. But, I’m notgonna say everything is gonna be perfect.
Markus Johnson

My Shadow
My shadow has never been noticed
Its light is dimming down
and time is running out
for my shadow to show.
But most of all, my shadow
may never get time toshow that it can shine
like it’s a star.
My shadow has always worn dark
blue, for some reason it
doesn’t want to jump into pink.
Why don’t you want to show?
Maybe if you show for one day
I’ll leave you alone.
If I can be free, you can be free too.
Tierra Thornton

52

N efert

I’ll Tell You
I’ll tell you,life ain’t no joy ridefor me neither.
And yes, there have beensome mud holes and humps
in the long road away from home.
But from time to time, I
did have some rest stops
that helped me get past
the intersections and get to
the next one.
There was one time that I
really needed your help getting
up a huge hill.
This road in life is
timed, you have to ﬁnish before
your time runs out.
Although there are roads
in life that are as smooth aswords that ﬂow out of your mouth.
Tierra Thornton

ea ri

aC

ra

wl

ey

My Life
My image is like asouvenir sitting where nobody
sees me.
Sometimes I think of myself as aprecious ﬂute blowing out precious
sounds.
My life is a legend that lives
on forever.
My life is like a starshining brightly in the sky.
Sometimes I picture myself asa dirty, ﬁlthy rag never being
seen and thrown in the trash.
My life is like a breath fullof ice.
My life is like a secret story
when you have to ﬁgure out
who I am.
My life is like love when love departs fromme and goes to someone else.
Sometimes my life can feel likethe loss of my best friend.
Danielle Blake

53

My Moody Days
My mood on my good days issweet as candy.
And I can be good and generous
and sometimes, my attitude can be
Like a raging tornado crushing
everything in its path.
Some people look at my attitude
as celestial.
And some worship me for my attitude.
And I put my life in principles,
little categories to see what I’m about.
Then, when I look into the sky,
I look upon the evening star andwish that I have a good day the next day.
And when I get upset, I feel
self-defeated.
And, then when I look at myself, I’m
semi-precious.
When people talk about me,
it’s like I’m under a bridge andit fell on me.
Then, at the end of the day,I feel delicate again.
Danielle Blake

My Inner Shadow
My shadow is a
splitting image of me.
And sometimes, my shadow
has her own mind.
My shadow has sneaky ways.
Sometimes she tells methings that I shouldn’t do.
Sometimes she tells me,“stop and think for a minute.”
My shadow lives
deeply inside me.
She comes out when she feels like it.
I can’t help what she says.
Sometimes my shadow is
an imitation of me.
She’s sensitive, pleasant and sweet andshe doesn’t cause any trouble.
She respects people and she listens.
Sometimes she gets her way
with everything
and at the end
she always wins.
Danielle Blake

54

ShambMy Life is…
My life is a matching game
When you have to ﬁnd out who I am
Some people take me for a joke
Because they think I’m weak
People think since I’m so nice
So they take it for granted
But no matter what they say
I still believe in myself
My life is when someone picks
A controller up and starts
To play with me
My life is when the game is over
I’m overMy life is when someone goes throughThe channels and has nothing to watch
It’s a basketball game
When the buzzer goes off
The quarter is overMy life is a computer
When you turn it off, it’s overMy life is when my grandfather died
I just started to recently cry.
Danielle Blake

rie l

Me

tts

Untitled
Who am I . . . I am black
I’m strong, I am intricate
but also decent. I am the drums
to my heartbeat.
I am a glimmer in the dark.
I am an ancient legend who’s slept for too longand is now awakening. I am my own souvenir.
I am my own breath that I breathe in the morning.
I am a long, never ending speech.
I am my own little secret that can get
loud at any time
I am my own footsteps to greatness.
I am a dream that everyone thinks is impossible.
Nichell Kee

55

My WinterIt’s a miracle that winter’s
ﬁnally here. It’s snowing and as
I go outside, it becomes quiet. . . it’s soundproof.
As I sit outside with my eyelids
shut, I sit and think . . . I thinkit’s strange that when it snows,
it becomes silent.
So silent that if there was a tornado
going on, you most likely wouldn’t hear it.
But as I keep walking in further
toward this wintry wonderland, I
start to think again, I think of it
as my own little secret . . . my own
little hideout.
I start to hear the laughter of
my family and it breaks the silence
but warms my heart.
As I start to go beyond my hideout
it starts fading . . . fading into spring. I
try to run back but darkness covers over me
and I start to think I’ve become blind, so I open
my eyes and my face is being covered
in snow.

Fly!
my soul is ﬂying
soaring in the sky real highjust want to be free
free to soar the sky
not wanting to breathe in dust
to just be ahead
be smarter and bravefor the things to come ahead
ﬂy to reach the sky

Nichell Kee
ﬂy to get your dream
ﬂy to hear the beating drums
ﬂy to the footsteps
ﬂy to see morning
ﬂy to the breathing uncle
take a souvenir
Nichell Kee

56

MarquHer Own Palm

ette

Pit

tm

an

In her blind eyes
she will see her insouciant
future.
She’s ready forher doomed life as
she gets old and senile while
reading an old myth.
Her life is described asa tossed salad with a glassof juice on the side.
Her heart is like melted cheese
on top of a great pieceof pizza.
Yasmin JonesI amDreaming of the world
As I’m sleeping
I’m dreaming of
this peaceful world
that’s beautiful
gentle and lovely
I’m the motherof this universe
sending out unity
to all homes with
one eye open
ready for any thing
I will wake up
with unity on my mind
just dreaming ofa world of peace.
Yasmin Jones

I am impossible
walking in my mother’s
lost footsteps, I’m alegend, my soul isa witness waiting to
be heard
I’m like a souvenir
that will never be forgotten
from wonderful voyage
I am Yasmin Jones,
an eighth grade student
I am a voice of a motherI am a pop star wanting to beheard
I am whatever you say I am
Yasmin Jones57

My emotions
Floating in polluted
water likeleaves in the rain
Blood dripping from thesky in the evening
when the sun isfainting
Sitting in my room
daydreaming of random
mysteries and miracles thinkingof all the heat from the blisteringsun
I imagine neon colors
all over the exotic night sky
and the shadowing of themoon reﬂecting through my window
glowing
Underneath all of these
emotions I feel special

Ode to the box
Friend and protector
keeps everything together
If I put something in it
I know it will be in
the same place when
I come back.
It may be brown, black
or blue but it issomething that you
can use. It may
be dusty with 4 corners
but have respect.

Yasmin Jones
People kick it
throw itrip itbut it still shouldbe treated with respect.
If it was up to me
I would keep andcherish it forever.
It was given
to me bysomeone special.
Cherish Gaines58Ja m alDecember

B ug

gs

I
Decemberit’s cold, it’s sometimes snowing
it’s sometimes green,sometimes red
sometimes you
have to go to bed
II
The candle burns
upon the moonlitsky
I dream of what
I am going togetIII
I get up at
the crack of dawn
to see what’s under
the treeIV
There was nothing
under there
Ashley Stevenson

Waking Up
When I go to sleep I wonder
if I will wake up the next morningor if the gun shots I hear will
go away, I wonder if
my mother will be
there for me or when I die
if I am going to ﬂy in thecloudless sky
I wonder if my life will be the same
some people think life
is a joke but I don’t
I want to live, do you?
Cherish Gaines

Secret evolution
My souvenir came from the heartbeat of the drums
The footsteps of a brightly lit voyage
The blasting trumpets over the soft melody of the ﬂutes
Going along with the windswept morning sun.
I also got it from the glimmer of the soul passing its grave
The ancient departed person who is now breathless
The ﬁlthy ﬁngers running over the wet coral
The secret evolution of the world soon becomes a legend.
Nichell Kee

59

Kaleidoscope
It is redspinning likea tulip being
thrown up in
the air insideof thered spinning
thing it has amaple tree
feeling. That’s
how strong
it is. It hasbeds, shoes,
daisies, dandelions
board games, horses
and a guinea pig.
They all havemultiples of colors
such as red, pink,
blue, orange, andpurple. The dandelions
were walking, theguinea pig was jumping
while running.
An upside down “A”
without the dash.
Ashley Stevenson

Shadow
My shadow has orange hair
she has red eyes
wears purple and loves plaid dresses
and blue shoes.
She wears snake skin shoes,
when she walks past me, it sounds
like the ocean waves.
She scares people when
they walk past.
She hurts people
when they ignore her.
Sometimes I want to tell
my shadow to change the way
she is and not do some of the stuff she does.
Secretly my shadow lives inside of me.
Ashley Stevenson

What I think at night
Before I go to sleep, I thinkof lying on the soft clouds once
I put my head on my soft pillows,
it feels like I am born in acloudless sky. I was thinking ofwhen I was born, I heard asecret name saying Ashley withtwo burned ﬁngers, it lit a little candle,
I heard the ﬂames scattering, thenI saw a blown rose.
Ashley Stevenson60

l– r: NI am, I am . . .

l a,

J

al
Bu

gg s

, Sh

a n no n
Allen

Reginald Conway

iA
ya

am

I am the writer behind the poem
I am the ﬁrst breathof the newborn baby
I am an inspirational leader
I am the grave of thedeceased
You may think I am losing
but I am gaining
I am the secret of the legend
I am the souvenir in
the gift shop
I am the trumpet thatmakes the music
I am the rhythm
that keeps the band marching
I’m the caution behind the sign
I’m the microphonewhich projects the voiceof a speaker while saying a speech
I am an impossible challenge
I am the calm blow of
the wind
I am

aom

My Life Is a Car
My life is a car, it is a Range Rover SUV going down the
95 interstate, with red color coming off the car like red
bursting ﬂames.
Sometimes I’m confused like I do notknow which way to turn left or right.
Sometimes I might cruise around notknowing where I’m going,
following the rules and regulations likestop signs on an empty highway.
But when I’m mad, I
feel like I’m in control, passing all the signs
going over the speed limit, running from the police.
And sometimes I could be nice,putting everyone in the seat of my comfortable ride.
Sometimes I might be peppy,
but just run out of gas.
I would build that gas back up by
laughing at silly jokes.
That’s how my life is a car.
Reginald Conway

61

Dream of the OceansDreaming of blue oceansswaying like a motherrocking her baby to sleep in a gentle motion
the breeze of the oceansounding like the mother’s lovely voice singing
trying to overpower the baby’s cry.
Then the breeze calms down
and the baby goes to sleep.
Then the waves start to ﬂow again
and the baby’s eyes open
but he’s calm not saying a word.
The ocean stops again
and the baby falls asleep
with him and the mother’s dreamuniting hoping that the ocean won’t
wake him up anymore.
Reginald Conway

Cleaning GrandmaThis lady cleans dishes, washes
clothes, scrubs ﬂoors, and cooks dinner.
But there’s something on her mind,
she’s wondering, does she thrive enough?
Is she appreciated? Should she work harder?
Genice can give gracious gifts
to guys and girls, maybe she feels unappreciated.
But in my book she is an angel without wings and a halo.
I appreciate how she cleans dishes with her bare hands.
I love how she tosses the clothes into
the washer in a diligent fashion, I likethe way she does everything. She’s amazing
and indescribable, and she is also my grandmother.
Reginald Conway

62

S ha n n

Intense Personal Color

on A

lle n

Teal
eyes
watching over servants
giving unspoken orders
Teal
eyes
touching souls
pounding for eternity
Scarletminds
hearing andseeing all
Cyan
ears
listening
and acknowledging
Turquoiseheartsbeating
like a drum

Violetfaith
ﬁlledwith exhaust
Fuchsiadazzling envy
lovinggruesome souls
Magenta
optimistic person
loving andcaring for all
Monae Smith

Lavendernose
just had copious
smellsAzure
bodysmells fresher
than an unkempt dump

My Name
My name sounds like a wolf that just got
kicked out of the clan. My name taste like a cookie
without any ﬂavor to it. My name is plain.
My name feels like grass, because it is ragged
and itchy and lumpy.
My name looks like a Playstation, old and outof date. My name smells like McDonald’s sugar cookies
and sweet vanilla milkshakes.
Marcus Johnson

63

Monae Reads Her Own Palm
I am living a life of an
insouciant salad ﬁlled withcheese while juice
squeezed from the cucumbers
and tomatoes of my doomed
heart ﬁlled with themyths of my senile almost
blind shadow while I’mvisualizing the future andhow my life will be.
I am living on a vacant
stoop searching for theright or maybe left trying
to get a clear vision of
who this person is in
my future.
I am living an adolescenttragedy while my parents
are trying to rush me
to the insane asylum
thinking I lost myhead maybe I’m justdead.
Monae Smith

PathosDuring this journey
wandering through the monthof December, January, June,
and July crying andsighing
thinking about dying
trying to have a gracefulemancipation
while hearing papa
say, “hi girlfriend”
and nana shouting,“why, why come on, I know
you can do better Nae-Nae,
get your head in the books
and stop talking so much,you gotta make it for you,they can’t make it for you.”
While mammy anddaddy co-sign, saying“mmm um.”
I’m weeping and grieving
and eulogizing overthe 4 family members who
have died in the pastnine months, while giving
my own hasty generalization.
My mind is feeling andsigning this paper anonymous,in my placid, ﬁery, fragile
but glorious heart beatingwith teardrops of blood dripping
dripping but all the time theblood was mine.
Monae Smith64

S h a mi

Kaleidoscope

Shannon Allenmes

I have to follow my Godmother’sfootsteps
It’s impossible
to do a back ﬂip and drink juice
at the same time
I play the drums sometimes. I have alegend.
I have to be brave for my baby cousins.
The sky is foggy. Back in the day, I wasancient.
I am luminous because I’m intelligent.
I have atoms, the smallest elements.

Ya
s

on

Untitlede,eJ

Monae Smith

ou s

in

Shouting pink
and weeping clear diamonds
leap like frogs
computers downloading slow
like turtles
cell phones out of range
and ﬂying like leaves
while having a windswept
blue triangle with orange knees
while white chrysanthemums
surround trees.
Televisions blank like
brother’s mind
while cheetahs fast
like Lamborghinis
swinging sticks
hard like A’s
yellow clouds
make a huge maze
while life is squareand very bare.

aH

Nature’s Kaleidoscope
Running like a baby cheetah
and turning into a beautiful
rose. Crawling is a lion
and windswept through the stars.
The wind is pushing the tree.
The streams are pink.
The turtle is in the water that is green.
A triangle looks
like a red oak tree. The water
looks like a light green
circle. A lion withpurple dots all over his body,playing and eating foodand playing video gamesin nature.
Shannon Allen

65

My Heart
My heart is a ﬁre
because my family
won’t get together
because of the badthings they say to eachother, that’s why myheart is a ﬁre.
My heart is a ﬁre because of
the things that happen
like my brother sleeping
everyday and I tell myDad, but all he says is,“Jamie, you have to walk your sister
inside the school.”That’s why my heartfeels like a ﬁre
because of the things I careabout are a ﬁre in my heart.

A note to God
If I wrote a note to God,I would speak what’s in my soul.
I’d ask for wars to end and for peace
to mend, for love.
I’d say, give us the strength
to make it through, help us ﬁnd love
‘cause love is overdue andit feels like we haven’t got a clue.
I need some help from you.
Give us the help to carry on,
if I wrote a note to God.
India BellJamie Warren

I am India
the voicethe voice in my ear
that keeps talking to me in
my head that tells me to eat
cookies, the voice in
my head that tells that boy
to stop, the voice in my headthat tells me to dance,
the voice in my head thattells me to smell roses. Get out.
Jamie Warren

I am India
I know I canbe what I want to be
if I work hard at it
I can be where I want to be
I am a person who says something
and means it, not a person who iswicked,or a lost person. I am a decent person
and a legend. You will never catch mesaying bad words or negative things
to someone or someone’s parent
or any other child or guardian.
I am India.
India Bell66

through my kaleidoscope
I see black and brown goblins like meerkats
leaping through the unique azures and tulips
sliding into elephants, stampeding throughthe Amazon river, rolling into unique blue andblack diamonds, hopping into ﬁsh circling the coral reef.
Aasiyah Muhammad
Ja m a l

B ug

gs

rea

ds
al

ou

df
rom

N ao

mi Ayala’s book

My Life is a Wild Ride
My wild ride is like abike and on that bike islike falling off of it andgetting a scratch on my arm
or knee, you can’t imagine
how my wild ride is. If
you were on my wild ride,
you would see how it feels
to be on my wild rideso don’t say you know how I feelbecause you don’t. Becausethat wild ride will hurt you.
That’s how scary it is.
I don’t even want to be on this wild ride,
so why should you.
India Bell

HomelandI’m at home
all alone thenI wake up froma deep sleep
dreaming about
the universe of
the unity withmy eye open. Then
my mother yells
from the gentle,
beautiful, lovely
world. Then I
come back fromthe peaceful land.
Bnyonka Simpkins

67SummerI
Summerits shine, its islandwith its beautyof waves
as people comeupon its sandy surfaceII
I swim with the dolphinsa rhythm, swim in
the ocean as the waves hit me
upon the sea

The Me No One Sees
The me no one sees is hidden behind leaves
underneath these leaves are growing trees.
My tears ﬂow like the river inside of me
sometimes I believe they can water a tree.
Behind my eyes are colorful leaves
they’re fallin’ off of very big trees.
Day’Quan Wrightthat summer morning,
we came upon the surface
with the sand, a sandy-likebeach place.
I say thison a summer daywith the secret of its daywith the dream that people
will comeIII
The waves areshaking and it’s prettyIV
The different kindof ﬁsh swimmingwith their friends

People upon the beach,bodiesI walk upon
the beaches
I sit on the sky
I sit with the sunset
Bnyonka Simpkins

68l– r: N

Wild Style

aom

iA
ya

l a,

J

am

al

I am very wild.
I try to keep a smile,
while laid back in style.
I learned to jog a mile
as long as I keep a towel.
my nickname is Quan, it camefrom my Mom, who got it from Tom.

Bu

gg s

, Sh annon Allen

I am very shortmy Mom said I look good in skorts.
Sometimes I wonder should I play sports.
She’s always there when I go to court.
Day’Quan Wright

SkittlesSkittles the amazing taste
it’s like magic touching your tongue
the puddle of ﬂavors justboomerang back and forth

She isShe is dangerous like a tiger
Her skin is soft like the clouds
A tiger is fast like a cheetah
She is as fat as the Capitol
She is as white as a marshmallow
She is as black as a hawk.

Darell Caldwell

Dominique Johnson

My Poem
My soul is blue, inside and out
I have a lot of feelings without a doubt.
There is more to me than what everyone sees
Build to destroy, built by trees
Extraordinary in many different ways
In the middle of a ﬁeld with many different rays
I stand very tall, but looked on as small
Guess I’m nothing but a standing wall
Earl James

69

Open the Door
When I watch you
mishandled and misused
and through the day you get throughso young, but so maturewishing you would open the door
let someone like me inand let our new relationship begin
Earl James

Life and Wisdom
I don’t know my wisdom
I don’t know how girls work
I know that I am loved
I know that I can sing and dance
Sometimes I don’t know who or what I am
Sometimes I don’t know who or what myfriends are
Sometimes I stop breathing so I think I am fake
Never fake as a person, but fake as life
Sometimes I don’t know what time or day it is
I don’t know my life
But I do know that I was made right
Only I can have my life
So tonight I’m going to live that life
Denisha Bolden

I Know Why
I know, I know why I woke up this morning
Tryin’ to get out of this school soaring, rain shine or pouring
I know why you always try to follow someone bad,Role model or your own gran’mama
I know what it takes to make you smile
Roses, chocolate and maybe a kiss, just to make it worth your while
I know what it takes to get out of the hood,
Maybe rob a bank or ﬁnish school and be good
I know what it takes to know some more
Either stay in school and try to be cool
Or call the hood your home and die tomorrow
Luqman Abdullah70l– r: Ja

Inside

m es

Sa

un

de

r
s,

Sh

Inside is like the world is going to end.
My heart is pounding and sad.
Behind my eyes there is sadness.
The me no one sees is behind the doors.
The inside of me is happy.
My soul is joyful and happy.
Underneath this is my skin and fear.

am
ia H

o u seEmmanuel Youman

Joy Inside My Tears
My tears are full of joy
I cry because I am happy
Tears of laughter, tears of fun
Tears of being with my family and friends
Tears of having fun, being loved andBeing around people you love
Tears of joy, this is my life ofTears of joy.

delicatemy heart is very delicate
just like the petals of a ﬂower
the trunk of a tree
is like my soul
Kaniece Whitaker

Brittney Savoy

My Amazing Wisdom
I know my life is wonderful.
I don’t know what will happen to me in the next few minutes.
I thought I knew how to be very friendly to people.
Sometimes I understand the ways of life.
I don’t know everything about life though.
I know the meaning of love and passion.
I don’t know the meaning of violence and force.
My wisdom is my conscience that’s inside of me.
It’s private and personal with love inside of me.
I only let my wisdom out when there’s something special happening.
Everyone has their own wisdom. Some wisdoms are sad, happy,
angry, or excited.
DeJon Tucker

71

I Write Fiercely
Rain falls like the sunset going down.
Scissors are sharp like someone’s dressed up for a party.
If your mind is like a shining sun,your eyes should shimmer like a star.
I write ﬁercely like a tiger,
and I’m dangerous like a lion.
Broken time passes like a day never ends.
But when I sleep, I dream as silently
as a baby sleeps.
His trust grows like a red roseawakening from its hibernation.
You look out of the window and watch
winter pour in as water runs in a sink.
DeJon Tucker

My Poem
My Special Wisdom
I know most of the things about my family.
I love my family like the beautiful ﬂowers.
I know that God is watching me.
I know that my mother loves me.
I don’t know that people care about me.
I know that I always speak my mind to others.
I don’t know what people think about me.
I don’t know if I am special, because no one is.
I know I am a beautiful childand I also have a lovely smile.
Latia Pimble

Inside my heartis passion and art.
Inside my heart
it’s very blue.
That’s my favorite color,is it yours too?
There’s also blue waterand lots of fun.
There’s nothing violent
like knives and guns.
There are little coconut trees
and bushes with lots of leaves.
That’s what’s inside my heart,nothing but passion and art.
Keishawna Simms72

l– r: S h

Chaos

ann

on

All

en

,
Da

nie

Inside me is ﬁre in the sky.
It’s burning and dissolving
I’m going to wake up
poisoned and insane.
My heart is burning like a ﬂame
and my ﬁngers are static.
I am going to battle
and it will be chaos.
No one will defeat me.

lle

Bla

ke

David Brown

I know, I don’t know
I know how to spell, read and write.
I know that I can use these things
to get somewhere in life.
But I don’t know where I am going tonight.
I know how to read directions,
I always read them twice.
I know no one can be me,
I know that only some one can see me.
Nicole Williams

Emotions
I feel upset
I feel a little angry
I feel okay
I am mad melting like a snicker
unwrapping out of a starbust
wrapper,
mad as a stray cat.
I am feeling okay
feeling real bored, mooing
like a cow, crying like a baby.
Nicole Williams

JoyfulSorrow falls like rain from the stormy clouds
Your mind shines like the sun just coming out
I live as joyful as a non-worried person
She is dangerous like a pit bull that has been upset
Winter pours in as a cup of Florida’s Orange Juice
Broken time passes like a clock that has been set backSilent eyes are watery like the ocean
Danielle Stover73

Ode to the heart
You take over the bodywhen the mind makes mistakes
There are pieces to be found from being scattered‘cause you are always broken.
You try to stay closed like a lost treasure.
Da’Shawn Washington

Real Music
Singing the blue birds
Humming a sweet precious soundThe best tunes in town
Kiera Butler

Untitled
His trust grows like a small child’s hope,
but as his trust goes down he becomes
dangerous like a mountain lion.
Your mind shines like the moonlight in Ocean City.
Broken time passes like a bagof frozen chicken trying to thaw.
We write as ﬁercely as if electricity
is passing through your body.
Myah Robertson

SaturdayThe life of love
The secret life of a broken heart
as the sorrow falls like a tear.
Your mind shines like a shooting staras the ordinary pain slowly ﬂows away.
I live in Loveland as a broken heartturns into many pieces andthe birds of beauty come to light.
The screams come to silenceas the hips come to the dance’s door.
His trust grows like a burning ﬁreas I dream of love as ghetto pain.
Still broken time passes like a burning rope.
Kiarra Payton

74

Saturday I was happy,
like a white cloud full of shapes,
a dog barking for his bone,
a cake that was being baked,
a fragrance of new perfume,packs of bubble gum that are chewed.
Da’Shawn Washington

A. M oOde to the pencil sharpener

ntel

Bro

ok

s

Chewer of leadthat is black, ugly
and sounds like a bagof chips being crunched.
You’re the swallower of wood
like a woodpecker.
Herman Clark

Untitled
Peaceful, lovely
Caring about the world
Gentle, dreaming
Always in a daze
Helping, hoping, caring about me
Never a beautiful universe
Surﬁng in itself
Sleeping nervous
Scared of what you can be
Hoping the next day
You wake up to see
Brittany Johnson

Dangerous girl like a gun
She is dangerous like a gun
Her ﬁst is made of steel
She hates like a tidal wave
She is boiling like an engine
She is as empty as a ﬂat tire
She is strong and fast as a falcon
She shocks like electricity
She sticks like a magnet
She lights like a candle
She is as black as a burning rope
Herman Clark

I Am
I am a child of God
I am a scholar
I am the ﬁrst round draft pick
I am the positive hurricane
I am a dreamer
I am the impact pf the future
I am the ﬂesh and bones
I am the diagram of life
I am the prospect of college
Curtis Canty

BraidsMy braids don’t make me
Do you like me for my braids?
I am who I am
Demarco Singleton

75

Untitled
Unity, togetherness
Is what I wish upon
A peaceful world
Why can’t we live in one?
Gentle mother sleeping on air,
In her room
Yes, she’s there
Without one eye open
She sleeps among the stars
In an evil world
This is what she calls home
But now she wakes up
One eye at a time
After dreaming about the universe
Then spreads her arms and starts to ﬂy
But as mother seems to soon notice
Her life is a dream
Kiera Butler

Suffocating
I am suffocating
And I just need to breathe
I am suffocating
And I just need to be relieved
Nothing I do is right
Nothing they say is fair
I cry and scream and throw a ﬁt
But no one seems to care
I can’t do what I want
I can’t stay out late
So now I sit here and write this poem
To release my pain and hate
No one will look far enough
Because I’m lost in my mind
No one will search beyond my looks
To see what they might ﬁnd
I’m still suffocating
And I still need to breathe
I’m still suffocating
And I…must…be…relieved
Kiera Butler

I Am
I am a beautiful, Intelligent Black Woman
I am the hope for all black children out here today
You shall know me as Sherita Angelica Grady
Not as a nigga
I am a queen
Not a nigga
Sherita Grady

School Time
Test taking is cool
Kids learning in classrooms now
Class reading is cool
Marquell Bethea

76

Bu

gg

s

Jam

I am a scared girlTrying to build a better future with my sister
I am a Queen who worships God
I am a poor girl trying to fulﬁll my acting career
I am a light-skinned girlWho is always being called white
But I am actually a black queen
Mixed with a lot of ethnicities
I am a girl who is scared
To live because I am scared
Of getting shot
I am a lonely girl
Whose dreams might not come
Until I turn 40 years old
I am a loving girlWho shows love to any person
Who shows me love
I am a ghetto girlWho lives around ﬁghts
Who lives around drug dealers
Who lives around dope ﬁends
Who live around people who have sex for money
People who shoot at their own family
I am a girl who has family and friends ﬁghting
A black-on-black crime
Whose ﬁght aids it and they don’t even know it
I am a girl whose dreams have yet to be answeredal

Who Am I?

Homes
People live in homes
Some live out in the cold street
Their dream is to be
Brittany Johnson

Manaiza KelleyDreaming

Dancing to Go-Go
I dance in the street
To the Go-Go beat ha-ha!
As I beat my feet
Manaiza Kelley

Beautifully sleeping at home
Dreaming about unity with her motherIn a peaceful world with no violence
And the universe is an island
With a gentle breeze every now and then
Then she says to her mother how lovely she looks
Wishing that she would not wake up
Then the alarm comes on when she opens her eyes
And starts crying
Jannett McKoy

77

Untitled
My life is like a movie
People always acting in it
Faking it
My life is like football games
Me always running yards
My life is like popcorn
People always popping up
My life is like a baseball gameI’m always running home
My life is like school
I’m always working
My life is like a clock
I’m always ticking
My life is like a jam
It’s hard to get throughAntonio Alston

My PainUntitled
I’m not a nigga
I don’t pull triggas
I want to be a millionaire and count ﬁgures
Benjamins, of course
Never will I gets stopped by force
Maybe by brain
Because I’m trying to be like Fat Joe and make it rain
Racist cops
Coming up with plots
To stop the black Man
Who thinks that life is about keeping a gun in your hand
So don’t call me a nigga to try to put me down
Because you’re wasting your time
When you look like a clown
Eric Quarles

My rage, my pain
My loss, my gain
The shirts I’ve stained
People I’ve blamed
The people that bled
The blood, sweat, and tears they’ve shed
Doesn’t mean anything—our lives are almost dead
From the 911 “accidents”
To the wars in Iraq
And the tragic losses by “The Man”
To the kids in the ghetto having problems
To the grown-ups still trying to solve them
My struggles, my pain
Something I want to lose, but always going to gain
Eric Quarles

78Untitled
I am like the sky
I get mad
I am like thunder
And strike people like lightning
I am like a ﬂood
Just running through people
Like a mad person
I am like a mother bird
Who attracts people when the mess with her family
I am like a computer
That breaks down a lot
And it takes a long time to recoverMartha Hardman

Sleep
Sleeping so beautifully
She looks so peacefully
Dreaming upon the universe
Like she was put to sleep by a curse
As she’s dreaming of her mother
She looked so stiff as her brother
All of a sudden
She dreams she’s in a jungle
So scared she curled in a bundle
Then she closed her eyes and counted to ten
Then she felt a great wind
It was Hurricane Katrina
And the ground got wrinkled
Then she woke up at home
But still thinking of people in the
superdome
Jasper Hicks

DC Creative writing workshop
Your contributions help makehArtworks possible!

The D.C. Creative Writing Workshop is a non-proﬁt organization dedicated to providing quality creative writing
instruction to students in economically underserved areas of Washington D.C. One hundred percent of every
donation goes directly toward our creative writing programs at Charles Hart Middle School, Simon Elementary,
and Ballou High School, allowing our students to work with professional writers-in-residence in the classroom,
the Drama Club, the Writing Club, and the Literary Magazine Club.
Show your support for hArtworks by mailing your tax-deductible contribution to:
The D.C. Creative Writing Workshop
601 Mississippi Avenue, SE
Washington, D.C. 20032
If you have books or equipment to donate, call us at: (202)297-1957
Or check us out on the web at www.dccww.org

This magazine was made possible by funding from:
Anonymous
Children’s Fund of Metropolitan Washington
Fannie Mae Foundation
Herb Block Foundation
Hitachi Foundation
John Edward Fowler Foundation
Mattel Children’s Foundation
Meyer Foundation
Moran Family FundThe International Monetary Fund
The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation
The Tom Lane Fund
The World Bank
Wachovia Foundation
Weissberg FoundationhArtworks

Naomi Ayala