School Daze

The Young Poets of Winnipeg

scurried around a classroom papered with poems.

Even the ceiling, pink and orange quilts of phrase...

they introduced one another, perched on a tiny stage

to read their work, blessed their teacher who

encouraged them to stretch, wouldn’t let their parents

attend the reading because parents might criticize,

believed in the third and fourth...

Naomi Shihab Nye
b. 1952

Theme for English B

The instructor said,

 

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you —

Then, it will be true.

 

I wonder if it’s that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-...

Langston Hughes
1902-1967

Too Negative

I was a kid other kids’ 

parents gossiped about.

 

They told their children

what I was: too negative.

 

I get it. Fair to fear

contagion of bad attitudes,

 

to think naming a thing

can be an inoculation.

 

Of course my friends

filled me in. Of course

 

...

Suzannah Showler
b. 1986

On Seeing a Photograph of My Mother at St. Joseph Residential School for Girls

A black and white picture

 

The sun is shining through a window behind you

 

Your hair black short Your small brown hands folded neatly on a tiny wooden desk

 

Some of the girls in the picture are smiling You are not Your eyes staring into the camera Seem a million miles away

 

That stare I will see seldom and one day...

David Groulx

Bad Brown Girl

i can barely speak in my mother tongues stutter

my accent is bad

i hate jalebi

but i like aloo samosa

 

i'm a bad brown

girl i didn't join the

SAA or the ISA

i just didn't know

whether i was desi or irani

i said turmeric

before i said haldi

i go to white-people karaoke bars

i...

Hana Shafi

Wow! You've Changed

You’ve changed.

You used to be so

and now you’re all

like, you’ve transformed

I don’t know how to describe

it’s like

you don’t like canasta anymore

you text IN ALL CAPS

your selfies are so

animalistic

like, are you out to prove something

you’re a lion

you’re a bear

you’re a...

Dina Del Bucchia

Ex Libris

I come from the land of

Where You From?

My people dispossessed of their stories

and who have died again and again

in a minstrelsy of afterlives, wakes,

the dead who walk, waiting and

furrowed, like ivy crawling up

 

All those museums and mausoleums,

lifting languages from rivers.

But I cannot leave them...

Adebe D. A.

But I’m No One

for M. Maylor

 

Dear Anne Carson:

My friend read me the poem where your mom

said that the dead walk backwards.

You thought this myth arose from poor translation.

I can attest to your misapprehension.

My social studies teacher in grade 8, Ms. Rogers,

believed it was customary for the Chinese

to walk...

Weyman Chan
b. 1963

I Lost My Talk

I lost my talk

The talk you took away.

When I was a little girl

At Shubenacadie school.

 

You snatched it away:

I speak like you

I think like you

I create like you

The scrambled ballad, about my word.

 

Two ways I talk

Both ways I say,

Your way is more powerful.

 ...

Rita Joe
1932–2007

Opus 75, Sestina in B-flat for the Glockenspiel

In the empty classroom, at sunrise, a girl

sits on the floor, staring at a glockenspiel.

She’s shredding the cuticles on her left hand

instead of starting to practise.

She doesn’t want to play —

not yet, if ever. The irritating sound

 

of her teeth clicking is the only sound

in the band room. The cranky girl

has...

Adam Sol
1969

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

 

or press an ear against its hive.

 

I say drop a mouse into a...

Billy Collins
b. 1941