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The dream of a common language is the language of one million dollars, of basketball, of platanos. The best poet in sixth grade is the girl who is this year repeating sixth grade. To speak their language, I study the attendance list, practice the cadence of their names.
The dream of a common language is the language of one million dollars, of basketball, of platanos. The best poet in sixth grade is the girl who is this year repeating sixth grade. To speak their language, I study the attendance list, practice the cadence of their names.
The dream of a common language is the language of one million dollars, of basketball, of platanos. The best poet in sixth grade is the girl who is this year repeating sixth grade. To speak their language, I study the attendance list, practice the cadence of their names.
On Wednesdays I take the train past Yankee Stadium,
to a place where it is never a given that I speak the language,
to a place where graffiti covers the mural they painted to hide the graffiti, to a place where the children call me Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss and I find in one of their poems, a self-portrait, the line I wish I was rish. The dream of a common language
is the language of one million dollars, of basketball, of pltanos. Are the kids black? my boyfriend wants to know. Dominican. Its different. When asked to write down a question they wish they could ask their mom or dad, one boy writes, Paper or plastic? A girl in the back of the class wants to know Why dont I have lycene, translating the sound of the color
of my skin into her own language. The best poet in sixth grade is the girl who is this year repeating sixth grade. When I tell her teacher of her talent she says, At least now we know shes good at something. To speak their language, I study the attendance list, practice the cadence of their names.
Yesterday I presented a black and white portrait of a black man, his bald head turned away from us, a spotted moth resting on one shoulder. I told them this is a man serving a life sentence in Louisiana. Is this art? Without hesitation, one girl said no, why would anybody want to take a picture of that.