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CJ

Gwendolyn Brooks

Updated: Jan 11, 2023

We Real Cool


The Pool Players Seven at the Golden Shovel


We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Think gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.


a song in the front yard


I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.

A girl gets sick of a rose.


I want to go in the back yard now

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.

I want a good time today.


They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).


But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace

And strut down the streets with paint on my face.


My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell


I hold my honey and I store my bread

In little jars and cabinets of my will.

I label clearly, and each latch and lid

I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.

I am very hungry. I am incomplete.

And none can give me any word but Wait,

The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;

Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt

Drag out to their last dregs and I resume

On such legs as are left me, in such heart

As I can manage, remember to go home,

My taste will not have turned insensitive

To honey and bread old purity could love.


Kitchenette Building


We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,

Grayed in, and gray. "Dream" mate, a giddy sound, not strong

Like "rent", "feeding a wife", "satisfying a man".


But could a dream sent up through onion fumes

Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes

And yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall,

Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms,


Even if we were willing to let it in,

Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,

Anticipate a message, let it begin?


We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!

Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,

We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.


Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), the first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize, published her first poem at age 13. By 16 she'd already published approximately 75 poems. In 1968 she was named Poet Laureate of Illinois. Born in Kansas, she grew up in Chicago where, in 2010 she was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and in 2018 a statue of her, titled "Gwendolyn Brooks: The Oracle of Bronzeville,"was unveiled at Gwendolyn Brooks Park.


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