Toni Brown

I love words. The way they fit together on the page. How they echo between my ears and heart. I write poems to slow the world; to look at some part in detail, make sense of something that seems to make no sense. I teach a poetry class for "at-risk" teenage girls, labeled because of their unguided reactions to their lives. I teach them to use poetry as a tool for examining their world before blindly reacting to it. They read the work of other Black women poets who write about our lives and circumstances with strength and hope. I shape words on the page, send them to be published or read them aloud. There is something about the words going out, bouncing back, the possibility of the shared experience. The hope that somewhere, someone will nod and say, "yeah," and a piece of their puzzle will fall into place.
 

DRY IN SQUAW VALLEY
(For Ms Lucille)

What am I doing here?
I'm not a poet. Using words
to describe what I see is just
a trick because I can't paint

Imagine a circle of real poets
each holding a bouquet of words
I sit beside them sand in my lap
14 and without my math homework

Perhaps my poem is in the refrigerator
wrapped around a ham sandwich
I eat the sandwich, hope the poem
will reveal herself. She jumps to the juice
to the cookies, laughs as I sit full, empty handed

I look for my poem in other people's poems
between notes of jazz on the radio
Out the back door I spot her disguised as
a black bear shambling under the cloudless sky
her thick fur pushing through tough dry grasses

Surrounded by mountains, my wily poem goes searching for ocean
I squint into bright sunshine catch sight of the poem on horseback
making her way up past the pines. Waving a white Stetson
she disappears over the top. Her song drifts softly down
"Happy trails to youuuu, 'Til we meet aaaah-gain."