Arts & Culture

I pass between lions
guarding what's inside:
bound gems to open,
endless words that sparkle.
I read till…

I don’t like similes.Every time I try to think of onemy brain feels like a vast, empty desert;my eyes…

For someone to read a poem
again, and again, and then,

having lifted it from page
to brain—the easy part—

cradle it on the longer trek
from brain all the way to heart.

My sister found them.
 
Read them out loud.
She’s so proud,
 
she’s running to our parents
waving my poems in the air.
 
Doesn’t she know 
she’s waving my underwear?

“That kid is weird,” says
the teacher, flipping her shining hair.
“I don’t know where he’s at.”
Indeed, he is quiet
in the way of a giraffe:
ears tuned to something we can’t hear.
He turns his sleepy eyes on me—
chocolate brown
with long, extraordinary lashes—
as I...

1

Standing outside
staring at a tree
gentles our eyes

We cheer
to see fireflies
winking again

Where have our friends been
all the long hours?
Minds stretching

beyond the field
become
their own skies

Windows   doors
grow more
important

Look through a word
swing that sentence
wide open

Kneeling outside
to find
sturdy green

glistening blossoms
under the breeze
that carries us silently

2

And...

Apart, we are two quiet things:
a person and an instrument.
I in my body,
the clarinet in its case.

We are like good friends.
The clarinet takes nothing away from me.
It lets me borrow its notes.

If I loan it my breath,
I can speak with...

I am a door of metaphor
waiting to be opened.
You’ll find no lock, no key.
All are free to enter, at will.
Simply step over the threshold.
Remember to dress for travel, though.
Visitors have been known
to get carried away.Illustration by Shadra Strickland

I am hardly ever able
to sort through my memories
and come away whole
or untroubled.
It is difficult
to sift through the stones,
the weighty moments and know
which is rare gem,
which raw coal,
which worthless shale or slate.
So, one by one,
I drag them across the page
and...

I come home,
feet about to bleed
from angry stomping.
“Boy!” says Mom.
“Quit making all that racket.”
But what does she expect
when, day after day,
haters sling words at me
like jagged stones
designed to split my skin?
I retreat to my room,
collapse on the bed,
count, “One. Two....

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:...

On an island of music
in a city of drumbeats
the drum dream girl
dreamed
 
of pounding tall conga drums
tapping small bongó drums
and boom boom booming
with long, loud sticks
on big, round, silvery
moon-bright timbales.
 
But everyone
on the island of music
in the city of drumbeats
believed that only...

City life is a whirl of poetry readings
and forbidden tertulias, gatherings
where young and old, rich and poor,
male and female, dark and light—
runaway slaves and freed ones,
former masters and former
servants—all take turns
sharing secret verses
rooted in startling
new ideas.

Each evening, I go home
with...

Books are door-shaped
portals
carrying me
across oceans
and centuries,
helping me feel
less alone.

But my mother believes
that girls who read too much
are unladylike
and ugly,
so my father's books are locked
in a clear glass cabinet. I gaze
at enticing covers
and mysterious titles,
but I am rarely permitted
to touch
the enchantment
of...

words
are birds
that arrive
with books
and spring

they
love
clouds
the wind
and trees

some words
are messengers
that come
from far away
from distant lands

for them
there are
no borders
only stars
moon and sun

some words
are familiar
like canaries
others are exotic
like the quetzal bird

some can stand
the cold
others migrate
with the sun
to the south

some words
die
caged—
they're difficult
to translate

and others
build...

If you can't wait to pick a book right now
And read it through until the very end
To find out who did what, and why, and how,
Then—lucky you!—you're a READER, my friend!
 

I take my kaleidoscope off the shelf,
look through the little hole at the end
of the cardboard tube;

I turn       and turn       and turn       and turn,

letting the crystals shift into strange
and beautiful patterns, letting the...