digital youth network

Tamara is a student at University of Chicago Woodlawn Campus Charter School. She has been maintaining an active blog about all sorts of subjects -- from personal identity to faith to poetry. Here she writes about her neighborhood in language that is at once stark and powerful. Her blog post was titled, My Street Corner.

Chicken smelled breezes

Wind blowing hard towards my face

My street corner

Filthy dried up gum

Concrete full of trash

My street corner

Gray, Curved, Destroyed

Bulky, rough and rocky

my street corner

cars speeding by

couldn't get any speed bumps

my street corner

kids just tryin' to have fun

riding their bikes across the street

but cars don't care

my street corner

stop signs not visible

not visible to young teens and drunk drivers

my street corner