For more recs, check out 8 Wonderful Books In Verse, 6 Books In Verse That Will Leave You In Awe and 100 Must-Read YA Books In Verse. “The first time I write my full nameJacqueline Amanda Woodsonwithout anybody’s helpon a clean white page in my composition notebook,I knowif I wanted toI could write anything.Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becomingthoughts outside my headbecoming sentenceswritten by———–Jacqueline Amanda Woodson” “Everyone knows the ship could sink, unable to hold the piles of bodies that keep crawling on like raging ants from a disrupted nest. But no one is heartless enough to say stop because what if they had been stopped before their turn?” Remembering Isadora Duncan “I asked for a womb witha view.Just a small picture windowto see what was coming.Even then I wantedto be prepared.I think about routes beforeI take them,Conversationsbefore I have themand life before Ilive it.Even the gardenIs not spared from predictionAs all I do is prune and refuseto replant.They think I dance for myselfBut all I do is planned.” “Daddy corrects white men who call him boy. Even when they’re in police uniforms. Even though the radio updates news of sit-ins and white citizens’ councils. I ride behind his beautiful close-cropped head, my window slightly cracked for Speida’s nose. Last night, awake alone, he parked the car in the Grand Canyon visitors’ parking lot. And this morning, he woke us up to dawn. There’s more beauty on Earth than I can bear.” “It made me sad to knowthat from our new homeI could not hear their voicesif they sang my name to the wind.And I doubted los girasoleswould understand me anymore,because now I was speakinga different language.I swallowed consonantsand burdened vowels with a soundso dense, the words fell straightout of my mouth and hit the groundbefore they could reach the river’s edge.”
