So, despite the fact that I have caught the flu again this year, I have still managed to try to do the most and best I can in my classes. Now that that is out the way I would like to post about my first outside poetry reading. Last Wednesday I went to the Air Lounge on 9th and Washington for open mic night which they have every Wednesday. I thought I was going to hear maybe something out of a comedy film, but the poetry read was very good and moved me. One poem read was by a black female poet called 'Queen D', she read a poem she wrote entitled Dear Little Black Boy. Every who spoke did a small introduction to what the poem was about and why they wrote it. Queen D is a middle school teacher for a special education class and she said that she deals with a lot of young black boys who are emotionally disturbed. For the longest she couldn't figure out why but after she held individual meetings with the parents of each child, her poem came about. That was one of the amazing things that attracted me to her poem, the context. After every line about the verbal and physical abuse most inner-city low-income black boys experience from their parents she repeatedly said, "I love you". She was saying even though you may not hear it if not at all, then you can hear it from me. The poem almost brought me to tears because I have an eight yr old nephew whose father (my brother) is incarcerated and whose mother has a 10th grade education and is currently homeless and has a brainwashed mind of imposed religious views. So I felt the anger and the rage from not being able to help in the way I want to help, or show the parents of every emotionally disturbed black boy what I see versus what they see. . . . Another poem that I was moved by was a poem called 'Poetic Stretch' I cannot remember the name of the poet but I remember the poem. lol. Very interesting. The poem was something I feel could be read as a morning ritual because it seriously was what the title said it was "a poetic stretch". The poem was instruction like in form and make me laugh and forget what might have been bothering me at that moment. It was one of those feel good poems that someone recites because they know you are having a bad day. The poem also had a melodic feel to it, I found myself tapping my feet and bobbing my head to the rhythm of the words. Amongst the many poets that read that night, those are the only two poems that stuck with me, but the Air Lounge itself is a very nice establishment with a mature and family-like crowd. Hopefully when my final project is done, I'll be able to approach the mic and make people feel the same way I felt that night.....free.

-Dorothy