http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/ICAPoet.mp3
A writing student at the Interlochen Center for the Arts has been awarded the nation's highest honor for youth poets. Seventeen-year-old Sojourner Ahebee was one of five teen poets to meet with First Lady Michelle Obama over the weekend. They will serve as a literary ambassador through the National Student Poets Program.
Ahebee was born in the Ivory Coast in Africa and moved to the United States with her family at age seven. Her poetry is often inspired by ideas of identity and belonging, and the exploration of social issues - linking back to her African roots. We invited her to our studio to share one of her poems.
When Ivorian Girls Are Most Hungry
For Cote d'Ivoire
By Sojourner Ahebee
I remember
my arms entwined with Edvige,
and the man
who broke the necks of chickens,
little brown ones
which were bred for our
Sauce Arachide,
bred for our stomachs
that grumbled for the lack of rainy season.
The marketplace was breathing;
boys kicking dust and soccer balls,
me too young to hear the crack of bone.
Just the pounding of Foutou in the distance
allured me
in September
when Ivorian girls
are most hungry.
I forgot to look and see
its head drop
and told myself the scent of blood
was only the scrape on my knee
from coconut tree climbing.
But there are no long legged
country boys here
to hoist me up onto brown bark;
just a grandmother's Magnolia
which was never meant for climbing.
So I've grown accustomed to those
sweat-stained, recollection-stained
bed sheets,
The sound of airplane wings,
Mamy Wata searching
for a little girl -
War is a man
with big hands -
the silence of a chicken.