UHS Award Winner - Jasmine Polanco

Jasmine Polanco was born and raised in Queens, New York and is a Junior from Williamsburg High School for Arts and Technology. Jasmine uses the arts as a form of Expression. WHSAT encourages students to write and learn to love poetry as a creative outlet.  Jasmine uses both poetry and art as creative outlets to map out their thoughts in their free time.

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Falling softly from the sky onto a cold pavement as birds walk by

With each step it leaves behind a memory of its skin

Entwined with life just as it is to fly

A crow perched on a small tin.

Birds of all different colors, breeds, stories made of words

Fledgling, Owletts, Finches, Toucans

All their own birds

But that crow stays perched on small tin cans.

Call him a corvid, a raven, a rook, a magpie

He is still a black bird

Sitting on a tin can oh so high

His feathers drop to the floor entwined and scattered.

His skin is entwined in his spot he's stayed his whole life

Watching others spread their wings

As he sits on that tin can.

A weird bird on his tin can for birds to scowl and squawk, glare and grimace

He has seen murder with no murder, windchimes with no chimes, scolded with no scolds and squabbles without a squabble.

He's seen museums and parliaments, pats from pats and parcels from linnets. But his mural is not ornate.

A flight of birds seemingly came to a standstill

From its bustling crowd stood comedically captivating corvids

Ravens, rooks, magpies…black birds.

There from his tin can they passed and watch

They stood and stared with no scowls and no squawks, no glares and no grimaces

He’s just a black bird

Opening to him with their feathers falling flat on foundation.

His feathers fly farther than its forsaken facility

Of his tin can.