Where My Grandmother Lived

Students were introduced to the following poem:

Where My Grandmother Lived by Doc Long Jr.

Where my grandmother lived
there was always sweet potato pie
and thirds on green beans and
songs and words of how we'd survived it all.
Blackness.
And the wind
a soft lull
in the pecan trees
whispered
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, Ethiopia
E-th-io-piaaa!

Among the poems it generated is the following:

Where My Grandmother Lived by Selina Lashley

Where my grandmother lived
there was always song
blowin' in the cypress trees.

Where my grandmother lived
there were sunday school,
picnic lunches in the park.

Where my grandmother lived
there were family meals,
barefoot dances for the young.

But my grandmother ran North
to this dirty, lonely slum
trying to find us
a richer life,

leaving us only stories
of where my grandmother lived.