About a brooklyn rose

This is a piece of art that provokes feeling, this is a poem about where I was raised and what made me who I am today. At first I resented where I was from, but I learned to appreciate it because it made me the person who I am. I resented it because I thought I didn’t fit in. I didn’t fit in but neither does anyone else- we all stand out and are unique. This represents my best work because it’s a culmination of all of my thoughts and feelings, it taps into my emotions more than all of my other pieces.

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Process​

My mentor, Jess and I brainstormed this idea. We realized the topic of where I’m from is something I could talk about extensively and creatively. It was hard for me to write the poem immediately at first so I wrote individual lines about different places and things I wanted to incorporate into my poem and I came back to those lines and stitched them together on my own time. Creating this poem was very spontaneous because I would have certain ideas for lines hit me throughout the day and it wasn’t really a complete poem until I spent some time stitching it all together.

The time you felt the most powerful

I felt the most powerful with my mentor when we went to Central Park on a unordinary warm day in February. We were relaxing and talking about real things, not just writing, and not just catching up on high school drama. It felt good to have total freedom of expression and it definitely brought us closer. Despite the state of America, something we were both worried about, we gave each other hope and strength that the future would turn out okay, as long as we had the same willpower and tenacity as the many other women who shared our passions.

by n'kaylah simmons