“Where I’m From” and Other Poems

When I speak with people about the juvenile justice system and the youth caught up in it, many of them remind me of tourists browsing a whitewater rafting brochure. Media mantras like “teenage superpredator” and “gangbanger” rely on the ignorance of the reader every bit as much as does “experience nature in a thrill ride that won’t be forgotten.” If you have experienced the power of whitewater or the sensitivity of an incarcerated teen, then you are less likely to buy prefabricated images of those experiences.