Akua Lezli Hope: “A three-and-a-half-year-old boy entered a Cincinnati Zoo gorilla’s enclosure last Saturday—spurring zoo officials to shoot and kill the gorilla. The boy was dragged across a moat by the 450-pound gorilla. After ten minutes, Cincinnati Zoo officials shot and killed the beloved and endangered silverback, named Harambe. The boy was not seriously injured. We could end up without gorillas in this world. We should work to have wild life in wild lands. But people put the gorilla in the zoo, people have decimated gorilla populations and people killed this gorilla.” (web)
Akua Lezli Hope: “This is a found poem, a pantoum-sonnet hybrid, compelled by Wendy Bradshaw’s resignation letter. She recalls the soul-crushing requirements made of students in schools and how the birth of her own child—with its attendant joy, also underscores dread for its future in school. I feel sorrowful that my New York City public school education, in an era before all these civil and civic advancements, before computers, included nine years of French, four years of music theory, nine years of music and art instruction, physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, calculus, geometry, four years of swimming in an Olympic size pool, reasonably sized classes, never mind performances, clubs, and some friendships which have lasted a lifetime. And I considered it all so deeply flawed and wanting as I lived it. Yet much of this is not available to public school students in the 21st century.” (website)