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April is National Poetry Month, a time when we celebrate poetry and recognize how it has shaped American culture. This year, KUT is participating in National Poetry Month by sharing poems written by students in the Blank Page creative writing programs at Kealing and Fulmore Middle Schools and the Writers' Workshop at Rawson Saunders School. You can read the and listen to the poems here, and you can also listen to the poems read on KUT 90.5 FM throughout the month of April.

Foreign Country

Read by Shawna Butler

The walls are covered in paint—

Faces, words, symbols I don’t understand—

And the asphalt is hot and black,

I keep walking.

The houses are tall and thin,

Bars cover the windows

And the air feels thicker

When the smell of expensive perfume

Floats from the windows,

I keep walking.

Voices drift by my ears,

In another language

And the sidewalk is crowded—

Every one of my senses feels alive

And I keep walking

Trying to hold on to all of it. 

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