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.
None
Regular
Contemporary
2023
Faith & Hope
Family
Poetic Form
Racial Injustice
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