Pick a Number
One certainty of life during the pandemic is the uncertainty of everything. The coronavirus skips around like a tornado; rules and guidelines shift daily; openings are delayed. We are living in a guessing game. Everything is random.
Many kids have lost interest in reading; is that really a surprise? Their minds are jumping around and they can't focus on anything for more than a minute.
Here's an idea: Let's jump around with them. Let's keep our reading to a minute at a time.
Pick a number.
What?
Pick a number, a random number, 15 to 114.
99.
Flipping to page 99 in HOP TO IT: Poems to Get You Moving, I find "The Artist" by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie.
The Artist
by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
When I don't have words
but I want to talk,
I use my crayons
or sidewalk chalk.
I draw the things
I feel and see
so they don't stay locked
inside of me.
© 2020 by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
from HOP TO IT: Poems to Get You Moving by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong (Pomelo Books)
If you'd like to see and hear this poem read by the poet herself, click here. All kinds of thoughts and memories come rushing in, right? Good. Write about them, if you want. Jot down a few lines just so you can remember later. And now let's keep going. Pick another number.
12.
On page 12 of HERE WE GO: A Poetry Friday Power Book you'll find "Blue Bucket" by Naomi Shihab Nye. Watch a video of this poem directed by Lorena Alvarado and produced by Moe Phillips.
Ready for another poem? We could talk about that poem (and war and peace and compassion and empathy) for hours, but let's move on. This next book, No Voice Too Small: Fourteen Young Americans Making History doesn't have any page numbers, so we can just flip the pages and pause at a random spread. A little past the halfway mark we find a poem by Lesléa Newman that highlights Zach Wahls, founder of Scouts for Equality, with lines that read: "I love my mothers more than words can say. / Straight or bi or trans or queer or gay, / all couples have the right to say 'I do.'"
I have shelves of poetry books. You might, too—and your library does, for sure. We could go on like this for weeks, you picking a number, me reading a poem, me picking a number, you reading a poem. You'll find so much diversity and inclusion in the pages of these poetry books, you'll ask yourself, "Why do people never talk about poetry anthologies when they're looking for Black voices, Latino voices, Asian voices, LGBTQ voices?" There's a whole world crammed into this 811 section, poets of every hue and view.
One more number, please! Please?
Okay. What number?
15.
In I SING: THE BODY: Poems about Body Image there are 40 poems about everything from hair to skin to feeling skinny or fat to braces to blushing to defining "ALL American beauty." And on page 15 there's the tail end of the poem "¡Azúcar!" by Margarita Engle, seven lines that beg for you to read page 14, too. Those seven lines are:
inside the power
of a song.
Offbeat.
Unusual.
Different.
That's
me.
© 2021 by Margarita Engle
from I SING: THE BODY: Poems about Body Image by René Saldaña, Jr. (Juventud/FlowerSong)
Now go find the book, sit down, open it to page 14, and read.
