“We Are” by Kenniah Woodson

This week, the Beat will be posting work from writers in the Writers in Baltimore Schools (WBS) program. This work was created at WBS’ Young Writers’ Summer Studio, a six-day writing camp held each year in August. This year, the Beat’s Lisa Snowden-McCray and Brandon Soderberg worked with the students for two of those six days. Some of the work here and much more will be published in WBS’ Writers’ Studio anthology out soon. We began with a piece from WBS founder Patrice Hutton and so far we brought you poems by WBS writers Abigail Mokuba, Jahi Heath, and Christian Pearson. Today, we have a poem by Kenniah Woodson…

We are me

We are a whole

We are the its that hold it together

We are the maggots that make the opps feel superior

We are the races that aren’t worth anything

We are Clanless 

      But even the clanless have a “clan”

We are African American,  Mexican,  Hispanic,  Muslim,  

      Arabic,  Italian,  and even Causasian

We are disowned

We are the food at the top/bottom of the chart

We are the targets 

      The weapons are the darts and guns

    And They… They are the throwers

The Hunters

The CAPTORS

They… They are the ones we fear the most

They are the sociopaths, 

     Loose ended, clumsy people, that should.