Listening to the Waves II

The Streams anthologies gave NYC Alternative Schools and Programs a space for their students’ writing to be taken seriously. Every student had the opportunity to write a poem. They wrote out of their own experiences in urban communities. Gifted writers found their talents appreciated by a new audience.

In 1994, working with Waterways Teaching Artist, Orfelia Rodriguez Goldstein, Kimberly Robinson put together a chapbook that contained her poem, “Being Your Neighbor’s Neighbor”:

My window is open.
Quick, everyone duck ‘cause all I hear is a buck, buck.
These are sounds I’ve become accustomed to,
But should it be?
My neighborhood gave this luxury to me.
Guns--that’s not the half.
Blades scar and never take away.
Now I must fight each and every day.
Someone looked at me wrong.
Now I’ve made them look like me,
All scarred up for everyone to see.
(excerpted from p.14)

Tratia Wilson’s poem, also in Streams 8, used the experience of children in the hood to reprimand adults for the dangerous level of urban violence:

Come on it’s time to play
live as a child and try not to get hit with a stray
It’s a dangerous long road to go but we will keep striving
to be alive

People might say it’s tough and
rough living in the hood,
But look around
Open your eyes
It’s all around the way.
Kids feel rejected and insecure
That’s why you grown-ups should be
mature
(p.26)

Such strong poems carried the edition forward. The young poets were talking to their peers and their teachers

In her poem, “This Isn’t What You Want,” Chenica Lee wrote:

I can’t write what you want
I can only write what I see
What I see is pain
pain from where I live
(page 30)

Streams 8