Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week’s segment features Aliya Bailey from the poetry group FourPoets, OneMic.
Bailey, who goes by the stage name Leaux The Heaux, is a spoken word artist from northern Illinois. She’s written and performed her whole life but started taking her craft seriously in 2013. She's a published playwright from Free Street Theater, where she has helped to write and act in original performances. As of late, she co-founded a poetry group called ‘FourPoets, OneMic’ on the campus of Northern Illinois University. When she’s not putting on shows and guest performing, you can catch her and the group competing in local poetry slams. To keep up with her and the group, you can follow her personal Instagram @leauxtheheaux, and the group’s page @fourpoetsonemic. She's sharing her poem “Grow”, which was written for the DREAM Action NIU "Coming Out of the Shadows" event that took place last month.
Grow
This is my third coming out the shadows
And much like you all,
And I’m tired of writing why no human is illegal
I mean I’m tired of writing how no human can be illegal
I mean I’m tired of explaining how we can’t be illegal in a land that was never ours to take or to place people on to begin with
But maybe it’s my fault
Maybe my poems are too complex and it’s perplexing them
So allow me to water it down
Roses are red
Violets are blue
If they are illegal
Then you are too
We sang songs hailing murderers for sailing the ocean blue
If this is the home of the brave,
What about them is scaring you?
If y’all are afraid,
I guess you really don’t uphold American values like you think you do
[But that’s not new]
The same country that can’t separate church and state turns down other refugees trying to make their way
But unlike Jesus, let’s focus on your ancestors,
Who you love saying came here the right way
But Please inform us, what is the right way
We’ll wait
To me,
It’s not having shadows to hide in in the first place
Even sunflowers look to each other to grow in the absence of sun
They don’t grow upwards in a “right way”
So stop trying to bury them when y’all know they are the seeds that are blossoming in an environment that never wanted them to grow
Even we use flowers to decorate
So with a culture so vibrant and colorful, how dare we say there’s no room for perennials in our home
You say there’s only one race, the human race but you’re justifying turning backs and keeping out our own
I guess that’s fitting for DREAM Action to have chosen the hummingbird
They’re the only bird that can fly backward so when the dreamers are being pushed back
They make a way out of no way and find the strength to begin again
Hummingbirds
They migrate any time day or night
They are not fearful of shadows
Like you all they are unafraid
They are proud
They can fly regardless of time
But they can also hover
They stand their ground
They recognize
Passports shouldn’t be a privilege
Because opportunity shouldn’t be a privilege
So stop
Because
No human is illegal
And there is no purpose building borders around people that know how to fly
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
