Credit: Fatih Ergun
A poem previously published in 2012 and republished here. Enjoy!
To my homies, mi gente:
Yo! Que lo que!
And to the professors, a warm “Hello.”
I come to tell of a university’s Heights,
where Washington fought
and left his cannons
and his bust, among other great Americans,
in a famed Hall.
I’ve overlooked Harlem’s River
seated in a room
someone else used to sleep in
when it was
a certain more affluent New York university.
I’ve beheld the dome, modeled after Rome’s,
theirs dedicated to all the gods,
ours to some guy named Gould,
and designed by a White guy
someone later shot
‘cause he’d slept with his girl.
I’ve worked at its Center,
tutoring a process called writing
to a process called students.
They, in turn,
have taught me who they are.
And if you ask me,
we are all BCC.