Poem in Hand, I Would Like to Welcome You With the Following

I experienced discrimination at my schools before I experienced poetry at them. But the first time I was discriminated against based on the color of my skin, the language I spoke at home, or some other characterization of me, I didn’t quite know the definition of the word discrimination. Similarly, the first time I heard my first poem, I didn’t quite know that it was poetry, either. Yet in each case my feelings told me what these things were. Today they still do.

Now, I deploy the English language to work for me as I’ve worked for it over the course of the years of my education, and as my mother has worn every bone in her body to work all her life: to survive its rancorous tone and the institutions it deploys against us.

My mother’s feet are waning into the ages now, yet with each new day she makes one thing clear:

We will not go gently into the night. Every moment we get, is another moment to rise.

J.T.

Author: J.T.

I'm a writer, editor, and photographer with a passion for community development en Los Angeles. While my editing work covers a range of different subjects, my writing focuses primarily on social welfare in the city, including education at L.A.'s public middle and high schools, public transportation planning and efficacy, housing and small business policy, as well as voting turnout for local elections and policy. My photography is similarly city-based, focusing mostly on what makes Los Angeles home to so many working-class people from all across the U.S.A. and throughout the world. Enjoy. View all posts by J.T.