Congratulations to rising junior Isabel Amaya who received a regional Gold Key for Poetry in the 2024 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. We mistakenly excluded her from the Spring newsletter in which we listed the other winners. Here is Isabel's award-winning poem, Do I Belong?
Do I Belong?
A land stolen by the colonizers’ hands,
Some called it their homeland.
It is the land of the free,
But they did not let them be.
Stolen from beneath the native ground,
A lasting truth, forever found.
Do I belong to this colonized land?
In this horrid town,
Disconnect keeps us bound.
To the troubled goodbyes
That comes with daunting cries.
We cannot go too deep,
Because we watch people weep.
Do I belong to this drowned land?
A modern woe is gentrification’s blow,
It takes all communities in tow.
Discontentment resides,
Creating the divide
Of all life forms,
As the people mourn.
Do I belong to this gentrified land?
The familiar faces once roamed,
Made the neighborhood their home.
Now strangers stay in their lane,
As people wither away
Into desperation,
As it continues to the next generation.
Do I belong to this isolated land?
We continue with our misery,
In our livery.
Aching for the understanding
Of the love everlasting.
We are buried under the weight,
Of our life’s most daunting fate.
Do I belong to this troubled land?
A colonized,
Drowned,
Gentrified,
Isolated,
Troubled land
With no way out
I will always belong to this land.