lies
damn lies
statistics
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    by Tara Betts    author info

Come in walking with heavy, black boots
Kicking dust from back roads, gutters & gardens

Sweat rivers, lakes, oceans from pores
Moving water to wherever a body takes us

Take the obscure & put it on billboards
Screaming in fluorescent letters what others hush

See secrets as molting birds & wriggly snakes
Explaining how feathers, skin & secrets are shed

Question so students upset rightness
Forgetting how limbs & paychecks are lost

Become driftwood floating through language
Bobbing in what could be said

Collective noun
Announcing armageddon, love & nature
Like afternoon tea

Dare to scribble words & tinker with them
Pruning dead phrases so poems live
Tara Betts lives and writes in Chicago. She was a member of the 1999 and 2000 Chicago Mad Bar teams in National Poetry Slam. She is a contributing writer for Black Radio Exclusive, QBR-The Black Book Review and The Source. She teaches creative writing through several local arts programs, as well as with the Chicago Public Schools.  In 1997 she opened for Jesse Jackson at a lecture to Loyola University. She has worked with Insight Arts, The African Peoples Socialist Party and NewExpression, a youth publication run by teens.

All material copyright the authors, printed with permission.

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