April is National Poetry Month, and these are poems selected by our student employees.

Selections by Josh Hart

stonewall to standing rock by Julian Talamantez Brolaski (entire poem)

who by the time it arrived
had made its plan heretofore
stonewall   it had not a penny
thats not true it had several pennies

I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party by Chen Chen (entire poem)

In the invitation, I tell them for the
      seventeenth time
(the fourth in writing), that I am gay.

First Light by Chen Chen (entire poem)

I like to say we left at first light
        with Chairman Mao himself chasing us in a police car,
my father fighting him off with firecrackers,
        even though Mao was already over a decade
dead, & my mother says all my father did
        during the Cultural Revolution was teach math,

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas (entire poem)

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close
       of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the
       light.

Selections by Aiyana Bolar

You Are So Articulate With Your Hands by Joshua Bennett (full poem)

she says & it’s the first time
the word doesn’t hurt. I respond
by citing something age-inappropriate
from Aristotle, drawing mostly
from his idea that hands are what make
       us

Poem for July 4, 1994 by Sonia Sanchez (full poem)

^{For President Václav Havel}

It is essential that Summer be grafted
        to
bones marrow earth clouds blood the
eyes of our ancestors.
It is essential to smell the beginning
words where Washington, Madison,
       Hamilton,
Adams, Jefferson assembled amid cries
       of:

                      “The people lack of
                    information”
                          “We grow more and
                            more skeptical”
                          “This Constitution is a
                          triple-headed monster”
                        “Blacks are property”

It is essential to remember how cold
        the sun
how warm the snow snapping
around the ragged feet of soldiers and
        slaves.
It is essential to string the sky
with the saliva of Slavs and 
Germans and Anglos and French
and Italians and Scandinavians,
and Spaniards and Mexicans and Poles
and Africans and Native Americans.
It is essential that we always repeat:
                           we the people,
                           we the people,
                           we the people.

The Idea of Ancestry by Etheridge Knight (full poem)

1

Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand-
fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare
across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know
their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style,
they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me;
they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.

I have at one time or another been in love with my mother,
1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (1 went to the asylum),
and 5 cousins. I am now in love with a 7-yr-old niece
(she sends me letters in large block print, and
her picture is the only one that smiles at me).

I have the same name as 1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews,
and 1 uncle. The uncle disappeared when he was 15, just took
off and caught a freight (they say). He’s discussed each year
when the family has a reunion, he causes uneasiness in
the clan, he is an empty space. My father’s mother, who is 93
and who keeps the Family Bible with everbody’s birth dates
(and death dates) in it, always mentions him. There is no
place in her Bible for “whereabouts unknown.”

My Father Is a Retired Magician by Ntozake Shange (entire poem)

^{(for ifa, p.t., & bisa)}

my father is a retired magician
which accounts for my irregular
       behavior
everythin comes outta magic hats
or bottles wit no bottoms & parakeets
are as easy to get as a couple a rabbits
or 3 fifty cent pieces/ 1958

[untitled] by Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta (entire poem)

once, while on a coke binge,
and away from my mother,
my father drove his car
across the sand
and into the pacific ocean.
before he had done that,
he had given away
all of his possessions,
and eaten
a steak dinner.
he survived.

Selections by Bushra Moghram

This Bridge Across by Christopher Gilbert (entire poem)
A moment comes to me
and it’s a lot like the dead
who get in the way sometimes
hanging around, with their ranks
growing bigger by the second
and the game of tag they play
claiming whoever happens by.

“The world is a beautiful place” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (entire poem)

The world is a beautiful place 
                                                           to be born into 
if you don’t mind happiness 
                                             not always being 
                                                                        so very much fun 
       if you don’t mind a touch of hell
                                                       now and then
                just when everything is fine
                                                             because even in heaven
                                they don’t sing 
                                                        all the time

Selections by Ian Russell

 

Villanelle by Otto Leland Bohanan (entire poem)
How dreary the winds shriek and whine:
    The trembling shadows grow chill. 
O soul of my soul, wert thou mine!

Death of an Old Seaman by Langston Hughes (entire poem)
We buried him high on a windy hill,
But his soul went out to sea.

Comparison by Paul Laurence Dunbar (entire poem)
The sky of brightest gray seems dark
    To one whose sky was ever white.
To one who never knew a spark,
    Thro’ all his life, of love or light,
    The grayest cloud seems over-bright.

It’s a Long Way by William Stanley Braithwaite (entire poem)
It’s a long way the sea-winds blow
    Over the sea-plains blue,—
But longer far has my heart to go
    Before its dreams come true.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost (entire poem)
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.