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By Suma Subramaniam
I come from a country so far away
that you may have visited only in your dreams.
My face does not bear the pale color of my palms.
I don’t speak your language at home.
I don’t even sound like you.
If you come to...
A smile always heals
By Suma Subramaniam
You cannot pronounce my name.
“Soor-ya.” Not “soar.”
Surya—the sun god.
Mom always tells me that a smile heals everything.
So I try.
I sit beside you in the cafeteria
and smile.

You look down at your food
and eat your cheeseburger,
I eat the lemon rice in my...
Being
By Tanaya Winder
Wake up, greet the sun, and pray.
Burn cedar, sweet grass, sage—
sacred herbs to honor the lives we’ve been given,
for we have been gifted these ways since the beginning of time.
Remember, when you step into the arena of your life,
think about...
What did you learn here? (Old Man House)
By Cedar Sigo
How to fall asleep easily on the beach, to dig clams, to dream a net made of nettles, a medicine of marsh tea boiled out to the open air, a memory of cedar bark coiled, resting for months in cold...
The Storyteller Gets Her Name
By Ari Tison
My dad used to call me Eagle Eyes. I was the one to find eagles, owls, blue jays
on a dark day. He called me so until my brother was born infant and grew to boy.

Having heard my name, as younger siblings...
Places and Names: A Traveler's Guide
By J. Patrick Lewis
So many places have fabulous names,
Like Fried, North Dakota,
The Court of St. James,
Siberia, Nigeria, Elyria, Peru
The White Nile, Black Sea,
And Kalamazoo!
The Great Wall of China, South Pole and Loch Ness,
And 104 Fairview—that's my address!

Thousands of spaces are places to be—
Discover...
- Culture
Kinship
By Margarita Engle
Two sets
of family stories,
one long and detailed,
about many centuries
of island ancestors, all living
on the same tropical farm...

The other side of the family tells stories
that are brief and vague, about violence
in the Ukraine, which Dad's parents
had to flee forever, leaving all...
- Culture
Counting
By Margarita Engle
I came to Panama planning to dig
the Eighth Wonder of the World,
but I was told that white men
should never be seen working
with shovels, so I took a police job,
and now I've been transferred
to the census.

I roam the jungle, counting laborers
who...
Rosa Parks
By Nikki Giovanni
This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said
they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago
Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would
know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters...
BLK History Month
By Nikki Giovanni
If Black History Month is not
viable then wind does not
carry the seeds and drop them
on fertile ground
rain does not
dampen the land
and encourage the seeds
to root
sun does not
warm the earth
and kiss the seedlings
and tell them plain:
You’re As Good As Anybody Else
You’ve...
Green-Thumb Boy
By Marilyn Nelson
Hybridization, cross-breeding, evolution:
He takes to new theories
like a puppy takes to ice cream.
We whisper that our Green-Thumb Boy
is the black Mendel, that Darwin
would have made good use of Carver's eyes.
So clear his gift for observation:
the best collector I've ever known.
I...
The Little Black Boy
By William Blake
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down...
Signing on a Crew
By David L. Harrison
Gather 'round, ye scurvy mates,
I'm signing on a crew.

You there! Can ye tie a knot?
Ye’ll do.

I'd say you've snatched a purse or two.
Ye'll do.

Does the thought of plundered gold
make ye shiver?
Make ye bold?
Ye'll do.

Ha! You’re rotten through and through!
Ye'll do.

Phew!...
You Go to My Head
By Carole Boston Weatherford
I sang my songs so much
that they became
the soundtrack for my dreams,
the melody of my moods,
a room I lived in,
and a balm for my wounds.

I sang my songs enough
to know them backward
and forward, enough
to wonder if they could lift me
from...
Carole Robertson
By Carole Boston Weatherford
Carole Robertston,
Who loved books, earned straight A's,
And took dance lessons every Saturday.
Who joined the Girl Scouts and science club
And played clarinet in the high school band.
A member of Jack and Jill of America.
Carole, who thought she might want
To teach history...
- Arts & Culture
- Culture
Watkins Laundry and Apothecary
By Marilyn Nelson
Imagine a child at your door,
offering to do your wash,
clean your house, cook,
to weed your kitchen garden
or paint you a bunch of flowers
in exchange for a meal.
A spindly ten-year-old, alone
and a stranger in town, here to go
to our school for...
- Culture
- School
Songs for the People
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Let me make the songs for the people,
   Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
   Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,
   For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
  ...
Song of the Son
By Jean Toomer
Pour O pour that parting soul in song,
O pour it in the sawdust glow of night,
Into the velvet pine-smoke air tonight,
And let the valley carry it along.
And let the valley carry it along.

O land and soil, red soil and...
kitchenette building
By Gwendolyn Brooks
We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”

But could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with...
The Tropics in New York
By Claude McKay
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
      Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
      Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,

Set in the window, bringing memories
      Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies
      In...

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A smile always heals

Being

What did you learn here? (Old Man House)

The Storyteller Gets Her Name

BLK History Month