the kid. Frank Sanchez

I found Henderson's poems very moving and even relatable to today's society. For example, his poem, "the kid", touches the topic of discrimination which many African-American in the Lower East Side had to encounter. Having studied in the Lower East Side I can understand the frustration and relate to the discrimination of the authorities towards minorities.

The poem carries itself as a spoken word video. I have seen many videos on youtube that has some slow and motivational music playing in the background while someone gives a motivational speech and this poem or words would fit perfect with some motivational background music. Although this poem doesn't rhyme enough to be some sort of rap song, it does have some moments here and there when it does have lines that rhyme. For example, after being stopped by the authorities the young man walking with an open bottle of wine responds to the cops when asked if he has anyone to call, "One bottle of wine. No one call to call mine". Henderson also utilized repetition as well that made this poem very spoken words like. When the authorities started to interrogate the young man he simply responds, "I ain't got no money-- and I ain't got not job-- I ain't got no home-- and I ain't got no one to call my own"; the repetition here being the I ain't got putting much emphasis to what the young kid lacks.  

Henderson's poems always have some message behind them and this poem definitely is attacking major problems with society. One of the issues Henderson is attacking is the discrimination by authorities against African-American. This young man is simply walking down the streets, yes definitely with an open bottle of wine and is drunk, and they decide to stop and frisk him. Nonetheless, the authorities then start to contemplate if they should take him in or not like if taking people to jail is a game and they decide based on their own personal judgment. Another issue that can be raised by reading this problem is that because of the social construct of the society African-Americans are being suppressed by the authorities and not given a chance to get out of such society. We can clearly see that African-Americans do no have the abilities to get out of such society and are being suppressed when the officer are contemplating taking the young boy to jail and he simply replies that it is not a big deal if he goes to jail or not which paints a picture that it's something that normally happens in his community.