Aja Monet

cantfindit

Aja Monet is a Caribbean-American poet, performer, and educator from Brooklyn. She has been awarded the Andrea Klein Willison Prize for Poetry and the Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title, as well as the New York City YWCA’s “One to Watch Award.” She is the author of The Black Unicorn Sings and the co-editor, with Saul Williams, of Chorus: A Literary Mixtape. She lives in Little Haiti, Miami, where she is a co-founder of Smoke Signals Studio and dedicates her time merging arts and culture in community organizing with the Dream Defenders and the Community Justice Project. Source  

District Two

for tanya kaufman

she used her work address to get us into school

could’ve gone to jail for wanting 

Her kids to have a better education 

she walked back and forth, forth and back,

dreaming of better futures for us. lying

and laying paths. this country promised

no child left behind, she put us first.

there's a way around the system,

just ask the right questions,

never take no for an answer 

Published:

2017

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Education & Learning

Politics

Literary Devices:

Enjambment

a line break interrupting the middle of a phrase which continues on to the next line

Imperative

an instruction or a command