Jazz Poems

by Ashley
(4th grade)

Penguins bopping up and down
quacking like crazy because they can’t stop

Bright orange floating all around
Full of color, full of life

Summer coming, full of fun
Life, life, life, it’s all quite crazy
People soar… on a roller coaster

Grass sways in the wind
SWOOSH SWOOSH SWOOSH

A rectangle that’s never satisfied
drawn again many times

It’s all in the music

by Lelaina
(4th grade)

Here that jazzy music?
That Frog Princess music?
Mexican Bollywood music?
Is it your dad’s clarinet music?

Bump, Bump, Bump!
Jazzy, bumpy notes of music!
la, la, la, la
rappy, fast music

What is the music to you?
Listen to that music flow
It’s first high, then low
high, fast, lower, slower and DONE

by Rosalie
(3rd grade)

This is happy, fun, fun, fun
This song is fast, run, run, run

It’s exciting, yay, yay, yay
It’s like water, up, down, up

A person’s playing the trumpet, toot, toot, toot
A person’s playing the drums, beat, beat, beat

This is happy, fun, fun, fun
This song is fast, run, run, run

2017
PS 188 Kingsbury, Queens, NY
Amina Henry, writer‐in‐residence

Amina Henry

Amina Henry is a Brooklyn-based playwright and educator. Recent local productions include PS (Ars Nova), Little Rapes (The New Group/Long Island University), and The Johnsons (JACK). Her work has been produced, developed by, and/or presented by: Atlantic Theatre, The New Group, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, The Flea, Page 73, Project Y Theatre, National Black Theater, Little Theater at Dixon Place, The Brooklyn Generator, The Brick, HERE Arts Center, The Cell: a 21st Century Salon, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the 2013 Black Swan Lab Series (Ashland, OR), Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas, TX), and HERO Theatre (Los Angeles, CA), among other organizations. She was a 2017-18 recipient of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Space Residency and is a 2018 recipient of a space residency at Dixon Place. She is a member of the Women's Project 2022-24 Lab and an affiliate artist at New Georges. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College and SUNY Albany. She is also a teaching artist for Teachers & Writers Collaborative and the Hunts Point Alliance for Children.