ABOLITION
EVERYDAY SH!T: THE PILOT ISSUE
The kids are a mirror across this plane, cheap wood desk
The kids join me on Tuesdays, carrying reflection
To a hospital-lit room, the kids are a surveilled walk
To workshop, the kids are a lot of laughs, say
Yea, we don't really like Black people, but let me explain
And the kids emerge, me an explanation, birthed
From a system’s grift, they are generations
Factory-packed into a hell of a detention camp
And I don't get it, but I get them, yet I don't
But like, yea, I too have been a boiling pot
I have been taught to cut first
Just so I don't have to cut back, I have been
Taught prevention as if it were a constant avoidance
Of funk flying past someone's stank teeth, instead of the root
Cause of the smell, get past me
We’re growing in love with our own
Watering mouths, the kids are a thirst for their own
But conflate water for drown, for wade, for
Gone, for lonely, for of course, a white flag
And I am also not a fan of surrender, yet I am
Frantically waving all that I have learned of letting go
Across this desk, into a story that don't match mine
But when we speak our shit, honestly
It's pretty much the same
Alyesha Wise is a poet, teaching artist & TEDx speaker from Camden, N.J. Alyesha currently resides in Los Angeles where she is the co-founder of Spoken Literature Art Movement - an organization providing poetry education and extensive programming for poets, and The Director of Program Development for Street Poets - a non-profit mostly serving juvenile injustice-involved youth. Alyesha served as the Da Poetry Lounge slam team head coach from 2017-18, co-coaching both teams to final stage at The National Poetry Slam. She also served as the Get Lit-Words Ignite youth slam team co-coach from 2014-2017. Wise is a 2-time Women of the World Poetry Slam finalist and has been featured on different platforms and publications such as OWN, BET, Huffington Post, Afropunk, PBS, LA Times, Buzzfeed, Free Speech TV and more. She has collaborated with The Nantucket Project, the ACLU of Southern California, Brave New Films and additional major platforms, having featured in the Google Interstellar Project, in conjunction with the hit film Interstellar. Ron Howard once wrote about Alyesha's work, "Very Powerful."