Where you from?
What’s that set you claim?
You gon rep it until the death?
Or til the gunshots rang?
You gon love it even after you right hand get slain?
Yeah it’s fire in yo eyes but do you still feel pain?
You gon try a legal hustle or you gon jus sell Kane?
Boo you got knowledge past yo years
Why you don’t use yo brain?
I guess you think cuz I’m a woman I ain’t laced wit game?
You at an awkward disposition while you on the corner pitchin
But baby boy is you 4 getting that yo gurl home alone wishin?
And you fate is in the distance servin a long prison sentence
Because yo palms won’t stop itchin you gon be lyin in a ditch
&
If you wonder how I know call it
Woman’s intuition

– Sharel Miller

From Poetic Justice, a WritersCorps publication at Ida B. Wells High School, and the anthology “Tell the World”

Poem of the Month: March 2008

I came out of this rounded earth that I made.
I put those glowing things in the sky at night.
My breath is the wind that makes you cold.
When I cry I give you rain.
Thunder comes from my anger.

I can climb to the sky
to make fluffy pillows
tell the sun to shine on you.
I can come back down
without salty water dripping from my skin.

I have diamond trees
in my backyard.
I gave my mother
the gift of Venus
the planet I named after her.

I can burn you
like an ant under a magnifying glass
the hot sun searing it.
I can catch a star
like the fisherman tosses his pole into the sea.
I fold this earth
like a mother folds laundry.

– Tina Ho, 17

From a WritersCorps publication at Ida B. Wells High School
Poem of the Month: September 2007