Monique Mitchell

cantfindit

Originating from South Central Los Angeles, Monique Mitchell has been working in entertainment and arts education since 2014, collaborating with Puma, Lexus, March for Our Lives, Cass Bird, Cara Delevinge, Maria Shriver, and more. Captured on home video, at the age of four, Mitchell was telling her mom, “listen to my poem.” She was first published in the newspaper at age six, intending to heal through words. It has been said that Mitchell writes to “disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.” She is passionate about helping those in her community unlearn everything that binds them. Moreover, she is passionate about liberty, specifically Black liberty. Mitchell helped get Senate Bill 933, an arts education bill for $50M, passed in May of 2016, where she was invited to perform a poem to testify in favor of the bill and received a round of applause from every senator. Her writing has been published by The New York Times and A24 in their companion book for Academy-Award-winning Everything Everywhere All At Once, Cultural Weekly, and various print publications across Los Angeles. She has performed and led workshops for museums such as LACMA, MOCA, and The Hammer and for colleges, classrooms, and conferences globally.

Bayou Blues

I saw a crying boy who looked like he needed a hand

near the bayou where I planned to give myself to God

same bayou that made me good

baptized my black skin.

 

Near the bayou where I planned to give myself to God,

I grew tired of carrying the weight of America.

Baptized my black skin.

Where can I go to feel safe?

 

I grew tired of carrying the weight of America.

My brother’s ghost haunts me.

Where can I go to feel safe?

Where can I protect my brothers?

 

My brother’s ghost haunts me.

I cried out to the bayou,

Where can I protect my brothers?

She answered, here.

 

I cried out to the bayou,

same bayou that made me good

She answered, here.

I saw a crying boy who looked like he needed a hand.

Published:

None

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Faith & Hope

Family

Poetic Form

Racial Injustice

Literary Devices:

Imagery

visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work

Pantoum

a Malay verse form, imitated in French and English, consisting of quotations with an abab rhyme scheme linked by repeated lines

Personification

the attribution of human qualities to a non-human thing

Quatrain

A stanza made of four lines.

Repetition

a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times

Rhetorical Question

a question asked for effect, not necessarily to be answered