The gut-punch of kids’ poetry

In the lunchroom of a Newark elementary school, where I have recently completed a poetry residency with 5th graders, the kids jostle into bleachers: Tiajah and Khaseem, Trianni and Norea, Shaleema, Curtis, and 35 others, along with a handful of teachers. The room still smells of lunch — beef patties, French-fry oil, milk — and a giant fan moves the sticky air.

In front are the actors, three women dressed in T-shirts and jeans, one with a bright cloth knotted around her head. They introduce themselves: two graduated from Newark schools, one is studying music and dance at Drew University. They hold loose-leaf binders containing the children’s poems.

And then they begin. No set. No costumes. No music, except the asthmatic wheeze of the fan. Just voices and bodies raising words from the page. The women dance these poems, they shout, they punch phrases with choral readings or echo words for emphasis, using hands and mouths and eyes to semaphore anger, silliness, betrayal, and sorrow.

They do Mahogany’s poem:

Where I come from…

I can smell lamb chops from a mile away

People breaking into houses

and with dark colors on

Where I come from

is not easy

And Dasia’s:

Blue looks like a sad family

and it looks like the sky

And the one LC dictated to his teacher, who transcribed it in purple marker:

Toys come alive when we

go to sleep and dream.

When we wake up they act

like they are dead.

From heart to page

I watch the kids’ faces as they recognize their words. Some duck their heads, embarrassed; others fist-bump the air or blurt, “Hey, that’s mine!” I think of the effort it took for some of them to move the words from heart to page, how many questions I asked to peel away their reticence, to tap memory and imagination: “What happened after your dad left? What did the air feel like that day you made the goal? Why were you sad? What did you see and taste and hear?”

And then there is a scream — no, three screams, the actors’ bodies frozen as if they have witnessed something horrible in the center of the lunchroom. For an instant, I look to where they’re looking. And then the words come, first from one mouth, then the other, until they are all talking, syllables and phrases layering each other:

I remember when Mike-Mike

died piece of his brain

was on the ground sawed

off by a shotgun we

were crying why God?

One actor staggers; the others hold her up. They are wet-eyed, wild-voiced: Mike-Mike died/shot on ground/why? Their voices crack; their hands grasp at empty space. The audience has fallen silent. And then Nasir starts to cry. Not like a stoic 5th grader gulping back feelings, but full-out sobs, his thin shoulders quivering, nose dripping onto his yellow shirt.

A teacher notices, too, and half-stands to walk over and comfort him. But before she can move, the boy next to Nasir leans over and wraps a protective arm around his friend’s shoulder. He pats him on the back. He leans his head close. Maybe he is whispering. He holds Nasir in the nest of his arm for 15 minutes. And the show goes on.

The actors, rattled themselves after performing Nasir’s poem, juxtapose some upbeat pieces against this heartbreak. They do Ahjhir’s poem:

I remember the smell of Grandma’s pumpkin pie

It glazed my nose

And Justin’s, originally scrawled in pencil on a ripped piece of paper:

I remember when people

say you can do it

and the cheer built

something inside saying

you got this and

I did it

Now they launch into Donald’s poem — Donald, who is twice Nasir’s size, whose arm is still draped like a jacket over his friend’s shoulders:

I remember feeding a monster

really an alligator…

My mom yell, What are you doing?

I said I feeding the monster

so he don’t devour me.

Nasir manages a shaky smile. He uses a fist to wipe his tears. The actors’ voices crescendo for the final line: Monster / monster / MONSTER! It is a declaration; it is an exorcism; it is a whoop of glee: The monsters — whatever form they take — are big, but together, we are bigger! The room crackles with applause.

The power of words

For several weeks, Nasir and the others have written about their lives: applesauce and baby brothers, funerals, cracked concrete. And I have walked up and down the rows, cajoling and challenging: Pay attention to the world. Find the juiciest words. Tell the truth.

That truth doesn’t always liberate. It doesn’t always heal. Sometimes it lances a wound, exposing the raw, weeping edges. Still, I believe it is better to say it, to write it, to act it, than to keep it hidden.

I hope Nasir learned this much: that his words have power, that he can use language to remember Mike-Mike and his tragic, unnecessary death. I hope he saw that others, including his teachers, also were moved to tears. I hope he understood a bit of what makes me do this work: When I write, when I read, when I witness the effect of words on others, I feel less alone in this broken place.

That’s me, though. I worry about sending the kids back into their world like this — unzipped, emotions flushed to the surface. This is a school where regimen rules: “Backpacks on the floor! Eyes on the speaker! Knees forward; non-negotiable! Fifteen seconds; I’m counting . . . 15, 14, 13 . . .” I’ve heard the sharp voices of teachers from other classrooms; I watched a mother deposit her kid at the school doors, like a package she was glad to deliver, then turn up the block to beg a stranger for 50 cents.

Have I made the kids less safe by urging them to relax their guard, to love and play with language, to notice and honor feelings? Poetry won’t save their lives. Words are no match for a sawed-off shotgun. And yet, I keep thinking of the Jordanian-Palestinian scholar Salma Jayyusi, who wrote: “If we read one another, we won’t kill one another.” I keep thinking of the quiet girl who said, as we stood in a circle on my last day, “I learned that in a poem you can express your feelings without violence.”

Now the show is over, and students file out of the humid lunchroom. Nasir takes his place in line, trudging upstairs toward room 206 and whatever awaits him after school in the rude, proud streets of Newark. His buddy walks right behind him, close enough to touch.