The staff of Jenny and YSUnity partnered up to produce a Voices of Power Slam Poetry Competition. This poem is the selected winner of that competition.

by  Brandon Niver

 

day to day

voices are masked

with silvery duct tape

by hands we don’t call our brothers’

or sisters’

in fact,

we don’t have to call them anything,

it’s a gesture of

“don’t speak unless your spoken to”

and we are only spoken at

or over,

and

the hope in our hearts lives

bestilled

and painted black

because colors are a little too loud

but every day we rinse off

the tar of pain, indifference

and silence

and by the end of the day

we are screaming

and our voices sound like hope

and our hope sounds like

love

and love sounds like

equality

and sometimes you

can only hear it

in the silence.