Elizabeth Acevedo - The Poet X – WINNER OF THE CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL 2019

Final Draft of Assignment 3 (What I Actually Turn In)

Announcements

Ice-Skating

Until

Love

Around and Around We Go

After Skating

This Body on Fire

The Shit & the Fan

Miracles

Fear

Ants

I Am No Ant

Diplomas

Cuero

Mami Says,

Repetition

Things You Think While You’re Kneeling on Rice That Have Nothing to Do with Repentance:

Another Thing You Think While You’re Kneeling on Rice That Has Nothing to Do with Repentance:

The Last Thing You Think While You’re Kneeling on Rice That Has Nothing to Do with Repentance:

Leaving

What Do You Need from Me?

Consequences

Late That Night

In Front of My Locker

PART III: The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness

Silent World

Heavy

My Confession

Father Sean Says,

Prayers

How I Can Tell

Before We Walk in the House

My Heart Is a Hand

A Poem Mami Will Never Read

In Translation

Heartbreak

Reminders

Writing

What I’d Like to Tell Aman When He Sends Another Apology Message:

Favors

Pulled Back

On Thanksgiving

Haiku: The Best Part About Thanksgiving Was When Mami:

Rough Draft of Assignment 4—When was the last time you felt free?

Rough Draft of Assignment 4—When was the last time you felt free?

Rough Draft of Assignment 4—When was the last time you felt free?

Final Draft of Assignment 4 (What I Actually Turn In)

Gone

Zeros

Possibilities

Can’t Tell Me Nothing

Isabelle

First Poetry Club Meeting

Nerves

When I’m Done

Compliments

Caridad Is Standing Outside the Church

Hope Is a Thing with Wings

Here

Haikus

Offering

Holding Twin

Cody

Problems

Dominican Spanish Lesson:

Permission

Open Mic Night

Signed Up

The Mic Is Open

Invitation

All the Way Hype

At Lunch on Monday

At Poetry Club

Every Day after English Class

Christmas Eve

It’s a Rosary

Longest Week

The Waiting Game

Birthdays

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

Let Me Explain

If Your Hand Causes You to Sin

Verses

Burn

Where There Is Smoke

Things You Think About in the Split Second Your Notebook Is Burning

Other Things You Think About in the Split Second Your Notebook Is Burning

My Mother Tries to Grab Me

Returning

On the Walk to the Train

The Ride

No Turning Back

Taking Care

In Aman’s Arms

And I Also Know

Tangled

The Next Move

There Are Words

Facing It

“You Don’t Have to Do Anything You Don’t Want to Do.”

What I Say to Ms. Galiano After She Passes Me a Kleenex

Going Home

Aman, Twin, and Caridad

Divine Intervention

Homecoming

My Mother and I

Stronger

Slam Prep

Ms. Galiano Explains the Five Rules of Slam:

Xiomara’s Secret Rules of Slam:

The Poetry Club’s Real Rules of Slam:

Poetic Justice

The Afternoon of the Slam

At the New York Citywide Slam

Celebrate with Me

Assignment 5—First and Final Draft

Acknowledgments

PART I

In the Beginning Was the Word

Friday, August 24

Stoop-Sitting

The summer is made for stoop-sitting

and since it’s the last week before school starts,

Harlem is opening its eyes to September.

I scope out this block I’ve always called home.

Watch the old church ladies, chancletas flapping

against the pavement, their mouths letting loose a train

of island Spanish as they spread he said, she said.

Peep Papote from down the block

as he opens the fire hydrant

so the little kids have a sprinkler to run through.

Listen to honking cabs with bachata blaring

from their open windows

compete with basketballs echoing from the Little Park.

Laugh at the viejos—my father not included—

finishing their dominoes tournament with hard slaps

and yells of “Capicu!”

Shake my head as even the drug dealers posted up

near the building smile more in the summer, their hard scowls

softening into glue-eyed stares in the direction

of the girls in summer dresses and short shorts:

“Ayo, Xiomara, you need to start wearing dresses like that!”

“Shit, you’d be wifed up before going back to school.”

“Especially knowing you church girls are all freaks.”

But I ignore their taunts, enjoy this last bit of freedom,

and wait for the long shadows to tell me

when Mami is almost home from work,

when it’s time to sneak upstairs.

Unhide-able

I am unhide-able.

Taller than even my father, with what Mami has always said

was “a little too much body for such a young girl.”

I am the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips

so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school

now ask me to send them pictures of myself in a thong.

The other girls call me conceited. Ho. Thot. Fast.

When your body takes up more room than your voice

you are always the target of well-aimed rumors,

which is why I let my knuckles talk for me.

Which is why I learned to shrug when my name was replaced by insults.

I’ve forced my skin just as thick as I am.

Mira, Muchacha

Is Mami’s favorite way to start a sentence

and I know I’ve already done something wrong

when she hits me with: “Look, girl . . .”

This time it’s “Mira, muchacha, Marina from across the street

told me you were on the stoop again talking to los vendedores.”

Like usual, I bite my tongue and don’t correct her,

because I hadn’t been talking to the drug dealers;

they’d been talking to me. But she says she doesn’t

want any conversation between me and those boys,

or any boys at all, and she better not hear about me hanging out

like a wet shirt on a clothesline just waiting to be worn

or she would go ahead and be the one to wring my neck.

“Oíste?” she asks, but walks away before I can answer.

Sometimes I want to tell her, the only person in this house

who isn’t heard is me.

Names

I’m the only one in the family

without a biblical name.

Shit, Xiomara isn’t even Dominican.

I know, because I Googled it.

It means: One who is ready for war.

And truth be told, that description is about right

because I even tried to come into the world

in a fighting stance: feet first.