Atlanta WordWorks Wednesday #ATLWWW
Weekly poems from your Team Atlanta representatives of Brave New Voices 2017
Ever Elon Taylor, better known as Jaha Bella, 17, is rising senior of the founding class of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School — home of the Flames and the Falcons — as well as a member of ATL Word Works Brave New Voices 2017 Team. Enhanced by a wealth of knowledge, an eloquent blackity womanist diction, and an inviting smile and spirit that could make the sun jealous, Jaha’s poetry takes you into her world and makes you feel safe there. We are lit lit to watch her spit this summer.
Read her poem below.
“Love Song Cacophony”
This poem is an ode to my grannie panties that tongue kiss my waistbeads when I walk
To the seams in my jeans that split when I sit because their fabric cannot fathom the majesty of my hips
To my lips
And my slight lisp
And the unlady like way I trip
And to my bitch face
That is never resting
To my confused sexuality and curl pattern
To being too “black girl militant” for your taste cuz you ain’t neva been full before
And to all the ugly and undesirable things that make me “colored”
Ode to the skinny girl living inside me that I still pray to
And the food fights she causes in my stomach
To starving myself so I don’t gotta be a war zone at dinner
Ode to my blues
To the albums I use to soothe the bite marks in my tongue
Cuz sometimes I tire of white women speaking for me
Sometimes I tire of black men telling me not to speak
Sometimes I just want a seat at the table without offering myself up as the sacrifice
Ode to my body
That I am still convincing myself belongs to me
To the foreign sheets I have made in
To men I have been made home for
the broken boys I have made love to cuz they mama ain’t love them right
Ode to my bed
That made too much room for should have beens
Made it okay to be spoken to in earthquakes
Made us shatter
Call it love
And confuse our brokenness
Made me carry their baggage
Ode to the nights I cannot untattoo myself out of
To how dead gods phone was when I begged to be held
To finding God in my sister’s arms when I thought I didn’t need her anymore
To finding God in my words when I thought that world didn’t need me anymore
Ode to the poems whose first drags were suicide notes
To the day I found bravery in being afraid to die more than I was afraid to try again
Ode to the fact that I got more bars than I got boobs
Know more about how to calculate an asymptote than how much jiggle my ass can hold
Ode to not feeling black enough to twerk but still black enough to be made into a church
To worshiping the mosaic of my being the right way
To never letting another man think he could possibly love me as good as I love me
To being the only one to call my body home because you will wait to be invited in
This poem is an ode to becoming the inferno I want to see in the world
To being a Zora Neale Hurston in a classroom of Mark Twains
to being a living testament of how beautiful broken glass can really be
To the air in my chest for never letting up on me
To my niece
And my lil cousin
And all the colored girls with confused sexualities and curl patterns
For making sure I knew
My poem
Just wasn’t over yet
Interested in Slam Poetry?
Stay updated with VOXATL.COM to read a piece from each member of Brave New Voice’s Team Atlanta and the coaches of Atlanta Word Works.
Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival is an annual slam poetry competition for poets ages 13 to 19. This year the festival will convene in the Bay Area, California, July 19-22.
Use #TeamATL #ATLWordWorks and #WritersWednesday to keep up with weekly updates and profiles of Team Atlanta as we progress through the #JourneyToBNV17.
Atlanta Word Works offers free poetry workshops during the school year at VOX, too. Submit your own original work for publication by emailing media@voxatl.org.
