Hi there! This is Maxine Wright, reporting for duty.

This summer, I participated in one of New Urban Arts’s summer programs, the Untitlement Project. The goal of the Untitlement Project was to promote discussion and exploration of pertinent issues such as gender, identity, relationships, and body image through poetry. It was a wonderful experience, and one I hope many other teenagers can share eventually. To help us write, the mentors (Jamila Woods and Jorge Vargas) would give us prompts, or suggestions and instructions out of which we would write a poem. 

One of my favorite prompts was the “god of your heart” activity. To write this poem, we were asked to describe the “god” of our heart: what this person (or entity) did, looked like, felt, and how they protected our hearts. 

This prompt really interested me because I had never looked at matters of the heart as something someone protected, and it was interesting for me to think of my heart as a person. This is the poem I came up with.

God of My Heart

Builds walls of glass shards and apple blossoms
sharp tangy blood smell of those who came
before
mixed with
the aching sweet 
of frustration and Fantasy
of Hope and heartbreak
wails and sobs
sighs with ecstasy
Light Fresh New
becomes
expired
and
you don’t know what you want
daze of confusion
kaleidoscope of choices
can’t escape past present or future
someone is waiting beyond that wall
hands bloodied scars 
from beating against unyielding
gates 
I can’t let you in.