Untitled I
Day in, day out, thinking about
what I would lose but won’t show.
Mom goes to dialysis every other day.
Four hours she comes back home.
I walk past and close the door.
Dad says why am I so selfish,
won’t even grab the bag of my
mother’s comforts during the operation.
Don’t I know what she’s going through?
Face, red, tears, rainfall,
I walk away with a knife in my
chest, hoping I would die, again and again.
It’s dusk, the sun falling, the moon, white.
Dad says his stomach hurts.
The scar on his right belly, five inches
I don’t know how many stitches.
It stares me in the face while my father
covers my bloody arm. I just fell
off my bike and shaved six inches of my skin
Head almost cracked open. Karma.
School’s getting weary. Three AP’s,
four hours of homework.
I sit from eight ‘til one scribbling nonsense
on the blue-lined paper.
Untitled II
There I stand, on a field of grounded rocks.
My toes buried.
There I stand free to the sky four
feet five inches tall
as the glowing yellow ball
drowned into the sea.
I stood there that day on
that land I had gone to war with.
A billion six legged friends erupting
from a volcano.
I kicked, I punched, I blew them away.
I had won the battle of my
flavor glazed chips.
I heard a voice calling me back home.
But as I looked they came back.
A divine hero surrounded and this time
it was too late to act.
They consumed me
and I in pain of a thousand
piercing needles.
A divine hero down.
A divine hero in pain.
A divine hero who is me.
A 10 year old stung by ants.
In 2006, over 25 youth began participating in weekly after-school writing workshops where they congregated in the hallway of a two-story building in West Fresno and learned the essentials of creating media and telling their stories. The group evolved over the next five years and is now proudly recognized as The kNOw Youth Media.
Through our program, we create opportunities for our youth participants, who in turn create long-term positive change in their communities. Our approach weaves youth development and youth media innovation to produce our biannual youth publication, multimedia projects, and community forums.
The kNOw began as a project of New America Media, which was the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations. In 2018 The kNOw became a project of Youth Leadership Institute.
