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.