Celebrating National Poetry Month

While T.S. Elliot may have thought April was the cruelest month, we at Mosaic disagree. Not only is April our amazing AEA Production Stage Manager and Casting Director, But April it is also the National Month for Poetry.

To send off this year’s National Poetry Month, Mosaic would like to highlight the poetic writings of our 2020-2021 Apprentices, Fargo Tbakhi (Voices Festival & Literary), Yasmin Eubanks (Company Management & Education), and Eli Bradley (Communications & Public Programming).

An Angsty Poem by Eli Bradley

“She tells me she hates rupi kaur,

And I laugh cause it makes her smile.

But then a few years later

I find myself

Breaking up lines in an angsty poem too.

Cause that shit makes me feel good”

Migration by Yasmin Eubanks

I wish I was a bird

As free and light as the pigments in the sky

If I were a bird they would admire the feathers on my wings as I soared carelessly trying to touch the clouds

I wish I was a bird

Free to see the world and migrate wherever the wind would take me

I could sit where I want, eat what I want, be what I want

I wish I was a bird

Free to make a home wherever I need one

No border to keep me from the land that you claim as yours

I wish I was a bird

Or maybe I just wish I were free

Free to wear my skin without shame

Free to live in a country without fear 

Free to roam the land without being labeled alien

If i were free I  wouldn’t hold any tension in my chest trying to protect my heartbeat

If I were free I wouldn’t need a piece of paper to tell me where I could call home

If I were free I wouldn’t have to wish that I were a bird

Because I could be anything I wanted

Antigone 4 by Fargo Tbakhi

when elephants mourn their dead, they do it quiet.

no sound, just puffs of air from tender trunks

that nuzzle fallen tusks and lower jaws.

the pillars of their legs shuffling around

those great grey faces. antigone wants

to be an elephant most of the time.

this world has grave enough for elephants.

we’d blow soft air through what trunks we have,

hold our wailing in, make silence blue.

elephant funerals draw no snipers. they’ll mistake

our grief for wind. perhaps our bodies shake

the ground, perhaps our hides are weathered, too.

we’ll make an earthquake when we fall.

they can kill us all, antigone, but then we’ll be dirt dreams.