To continue our celebration of National Poetry Month, we have a special ekphrastic poem for you this afternoon! Badgerdog took Mr. Villegas’s fourth grade classroom at Perez Elementary (along with three other classes at Perez and eighteen other classrooms from Austin, Manor, and Del Valle school districts) to visit the El Anatsui exhibit at the Blanton Museum last fall. El Anatsui’s remarkable Akua’s Surviving, which speaks to the slave trade and the conditions of humanity, inspired Ariana’s poem.
Surviving Children
There was a furious fire
that showed on the ocean.
Kids were just having a good
old time like everyday.
When the twelve girls came screaming,
“Fire! Fire! Run for your lives!”
So they ran to their home. Nobody
believed them. They did not
survive.
Those twelve girls started
the world again.
Ariana, fourth grade, Perez Elementary School
unbound 