Auction Street
By: Lucille Clifton
consider the drum.
Consider the auction street
And the beat
Throbbing up through our shoes,
Through the trolley
So that it rides as if propelled
By hundreds, by thousands
Of fathers and mothers
Led in a coffle
To the block
Consider the block.
Topside smooth as skin
Almost translucent like a drum
That has been beaten
For the last time
And waits now to be honored
For the music it has to bear.
Then consider brother moses,
Who heard from the mountaintop:
Take off your shoes.
The ground you walk is holy.
John, Who is Poor
By: Gwendolyn Brooks
Oh, little children, be good to John!Who lives so lone and alone.
Whose Mama must hurry to toil all day.
Whose Papa is dead and done.
Give him a berry, boys, when you may.
And, girls, some mint when you can.
And do not ask when his hunger will end.
Nor yet when it began.
Incident
By: Countee Cullen
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
Your World
By: Georgia Douglas Johnson
Your world is as big as you make it.
I know, for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner,
My wings pressing close to my side.
But I sighted the distant horizon
Where the skyline encircled the sea
And I throbbed with a burning desire
To travel this immensity.
I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze,
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease!
Human Family
By: Maya Angelou
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes
By: Shel Silverstein
If you have to dry the dishes
(Such an awful, boring chore)
If you have to dry the dishes
(‘Stead of going to the store)
If you have to dry the dishes
And you drop one on the floor—
Maybe they won’t let you
Dry the dishes anymore.
Strange Wind
By: Shel Silverstein
What a strange wind it was today,
Whistlin' and whirlin' and scurlin' away
Like a worried old woman with so much to say.
What a strange wind it was today.
What a strange wind it was today,
Cool and clear from a sky so grey
And my hat stayed on but my head blew awayWhat a strange wind it was today
There’s a Bear in There
By: Shel Silverstein
There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire-He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there-That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.
This Morning
By: Lucille Clifton
this morning
this morning
i met myself
coming in
a bright
jungle girl
shining
quick as a snake
a tall
tree girl a
me girl
i met myself
this morning
coming in
and all day
i have been
a black bell
ringing
i survive
survive!
Standing is Stupid
By: Shel Silverstein
Standing is stupid,
Crawling’s a curse,
Skipping is silly,
Walking is worse.
Hopping is hopeless,
Jumping a chore,
Sitting is senseless,
Leaning’s a bore.
Running’s ridiculous.
Jogging’s insane–
Guess I’ll go upstairs and
Lie down again.
Women
By: Alice Walker
They were women then
My mama's generation about 1920
Husky of voice--stout of
Step proud, strutting women
With fists as well as
Hands worked & fought with hands
How they battered down
Doors doors of injustice, discrimination
And ironed
Starched white
Shirts many worked as manual (laundry) labor (maids) and in shops
How they led
Armies
Headragged generals used to tie their heads up for sweating
Across mined
Fields evaded traps set for them
Booby-trapped
Ditches jumped over obstacles
To discover books
Desks read and sought education when it was not an acceptable role for a woman (should have been
satisfied to be a housewife)
A place for us
How they knew what we
Must know
Without knowing a page did so for future generations to raise them
Of it
Themselves. above themselves/ knew that economic independence would help all women
Those Winter Sundays
By: Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Human Family
By: Maya Angelou
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
Fifth Grade Autobiography
BY RITA DOVE
I was four in this photograph fishing
with my grandparents at a lake in Michigan.
My brother squats in poison ivy.
His Davy Crockett cap
sits squared on his head so the raccoon tail
flounces down the back of his sailor suit.
My grandfather sits to the far right
in a folding chair,
and I know his left hand is on
the tobacco in his pants pocket
because I used to wrap it for him
every Christmas. Grandmother's hips
bulge from the brush, she's leaning
into the ice chest, sun through the trees
printing her dress with soft
luminous paws.
I am staring jealously at my brother;
the day before he rode his first horse, alone.
I was strapped in a basket
behind my grandfather.
He smelled of lemons. He's died—
but I remember his hands.
Primer for the Nuclear Age
By Rita Dove
At the edge of the mariner’s
map is written: “Beyond
this point lie Monsters.”
Someone left the light on
in the pantry—there’s
a skull in there on the shelf
that talks. Blue eyes
in the air, blue as
an idiot’s. Any fear, any
memory will do; and if you’ve
got a heart at all, someday
it will kill you.
Listen Children
By: Lucille Clifton
listen children
keep this in the place
you have for keeping
always
keep it all ways
we have never hated black
listen
we have been ashamed
hopeless tired mad
but always
all ways
we loved us
we have always loved each other
children all ways
pass it on
Little Brown Baby
By: Paul Laurence Dunbar
Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,
Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh -- makin' san' pies?
Look at dat bib -- you's es du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf -- dat's merlasses, I bet;
Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's.
Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit,
Little Brown Baby
by: Paul Laurence Dunbar
Bein' so sticky an sweet -- goodness lan's!
Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,
Who's pappy's darlin' an' who's pappy's chile?
Who is it all de day nevah once tries
Fu' to be cross, er once loses dat smile?
Whah did you git dem teef? My, you's a scamp!
Whah did dat dimple come f'om in yo' chin?
Pappy do' know you -- I b'lieves you's a tramp;
Mammy, dis hyeah's some ol' straggler got in!
Let's th'ow him outen de do' in de san',
We do' want stragglers a-layin' 'roun' hyeah;
Let's gin him 'way to de big buggah-man;
I know he's hidin' erroun' hyeah right neah.
Buggah-man, buggah-man, come in de do',
Hyeah's a bad boy you kin have fu' to eat.
Mammy an' pappy do' want him no mo',
Swaller him down f'om his haid to his feet!
Dah, now, I t'ought dat you'd hug me up close.
Go back, ol' buggah, you sha'n't have dis boy.
He ain't no tramp, ner no straggler, of co'se;
He's pappy's pa'dner an' play-mate an' joy.
Come to you' pallet now -- go to yo' res';
Wisht you could allus know ease an' cleah skies;
Wisht you could stay jes' a chile on my breas'--
Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes!
We Alone by: Alice Walker
We alone can devalue gold
by not caring
if it falls or rises
in the marketplace.
Wherever there is gold
there is a chain, you know,
and if your chain
is gold
so much the worse
for you.
Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones
are all as rare.
This could be our revolution:
to love what is plentiful
as much as
what's scarce.
RHAPSODY
by: William Stanley Braithwaite (1878-1962)
AM glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of to-morrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.
Aunt Sue's Stories
Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
Summer nights on the front porch
Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom
5 And tells him stories.
Black slaves
Working in the hot sun,
And black slaves
Walking in the dewy night,
10 And black slaves
Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river
Mingle themselves softly
In the flow of old Aunt Sue's voice,
Mingle themselves softly
15 In the dark shadows that cross and recross
Aunt Sue's stories.
And the dark-faced child, listening,
Knows that Aunt Sue's stories are real stories.
He knows that Aunt Sue never got her storie
20 Out of any book at all,
But that they came
Right out of her own life.
The dark-faced child is quiet
Of a summer night
25 Listening to Aunt Sue's stories.
—Langston Hughes
How Poems are Made/A Discredited View
by Alice Walker
Letting go
In order to hold one
I gradually understand
How poems are made.
There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
Of the too full cup
And runs and hides
Its too full self
In shame.
I gradually comprehend
How poems are made.
To the upbeat flight of memories.
The flagged beats of the running
Heart.
I understand how poems are made.
They are the tears
That season the smile.
The stiff-neck laughter
That crowds the throat.
The leftover love.
I know how poems are made.
There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain
Primer
By : Rita Dove
In the sixth grade I was chased home by
the Gatlin kids. three skinny sisters
in rolled-down bobby socks. Hissing
Brainiac! and Mrs. Stringbean!.
they trod my heel.
I knew my body was no big deal
but never thought to retort: who’s
calling who skinny? (Besides, I knew
they’d beat me up.) I survived
their shoves across the schoolyard
because my five-foot-zero mother drove up
in her Caddie to shake them down to size.
Nothing could get me into that car.
I took the long way home, swore
I’d show them all: I would grow up.
Night
By: E. Ethelbert Miller
at some ungodly hour
her house shoes would scrape across
the wooden floor
as she moved from bedroom to kitchen
i would lie in my room and hear her
opening cabinets
washing dishes
placing a pot on the stove
then walking slowly back to where I was
to see how i was sleeping
to see if any blankets were on the floor
Growing Up
By: E. Ethelbert Miller
the day my mother
threw away my comic books
and encouraged me to read the bible
was the day i gave up being
a superhero and started to think
of miracles
this is how i came to love you
like moses looking over his
shoulder before he left that
mountain
Legacies
by: Nikki Giovanni
her grandmother called her from the playground
"yes, ma'am"
"i want chu to learn how to make rolls said the old
woman proudly
but the little girl didn't want
to learn how because she knew
even if she couldn't say it that
the would mean when the old one died she would be less
dependent on her spirit so
she said
"i don't want to know how to make no rolls"
with her lips poked out
and the old woman wiped her hands on
her apron saying "lord
these children"
an neither of them ever
said what they meant
and i guess nobody ever does
My People
By: Langston Hughes
The night is beautiful
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.