ME
This new year
I will still be 5.
A 5-year-old knows his letters.
This new day
I wish I had a new name.
I wish my new name was J-money.
If my name was J-money
I would play with dollars.
I would play with my brother
outside in a field
and tell his friends that I got a new name.
This new day,
goodbye.
Goodbye, Mommy.
Goodbye, Daddy.
Hello, Brother.
—from 2018 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
__________
Why do you like to write poetry?
Ja’Lantea Johnson: “Because you can think of stuff you did and put it in a book.”
