Dilemma (Feb. 13, 2011)

Dilemma
Time after time a notion comes through my mind,
Should I move on?
Or should I stay at a stand still place.
Though everything seems content …
In this place there is no room for improvement.
I deserve better,
I deserve excitement,
I deserve to be happy.
The only problem is will I chase
After this vision or
Surrender my happiness for my comfort.

Time "Free Verse"

Let me redirect your time,
or better yet redirect your mind.
You keep telling me stories and
I'm just amused by your lies.
I wonder where we are going,
but then I remember it's all
a waste of time. You are a liar
and you will never be mind.

From The Drak Tower

From The Dark Tower

We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made eternally to weep.
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark
White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

By: Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen is poet, anthologist, novelist, translator, children's writer, and playwright. I pick this poem, because of the symbols in this poem. In this poem, Cullen expresses the crux of the protest poem which so flourished in the Harlem Renaissance. In poem after poem, articulate young Negroes answered these questions or asked them again, these questions and many more. And in the asking, and in the answering, they were speaking of the old, well-worn (though never quite realized) American ideals. Cullen symbols invariably refer to the natural sequence of things—the hope eventually realized, or the "just deserts" finally obtained. The sowing-reaping symbol here effectively expresses the frustration that inevitably falls to the individual or group of people caught in an unjust system. The image of a person planting the seeds of his labor, knowing even as he plants that "others" will pluck the fruit, is a picture of the frustration which is so often the Negro's lot. These images imply certain questions: What must be the feelings of the one who plants and how long will he continue to plant without reward?

Poem about My Rights

"Poem about My Rights"

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can't
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can't do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can't do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after stabbing him after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am
which is exactly like South Africa
penetrating into Namibia penetrating into
Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if
Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the
proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland
and if
after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe
and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to
self-immolation of the villages and if after that
we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they
claim my consent:
Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of
the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what
in the hell is everybody being reasonable about
and according to the Times this week
back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem
and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they
killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba
and before that it was my father on the campus
of my Ivy League school and my father afraid
to walk into the cafeteria because he said he
was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong
gender identity and he was paying my tuition and
before that
it was my father saying I was wrong saying that
I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a
boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and
that I should have had straighter hair and that
I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should
just be one/a boy and before that
it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for
my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me
to let the books loose to let them loose in other
words
I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.
and the problems of South Africa and the problems
of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white
America in general and the problems of the teachers
and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social
workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very
familiar with the problems because the problems
turn out to be
me
I am the history of rape
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
my self
I am the history of battery assault and limitless
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
and my body and my soul and
whether it's about walking out at night
or whether it's about the love that I feel or
whether it's about the sanctity of my vagina or
the sanctity of my national boundaries
or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity
of each and every desire
that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic
and disputably single and singular heart
I have been raped
be-
cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age
the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the
wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic
the wrong sartorial I
I have been the meaning of rape
I have been the problem everyone seeks to
eliminate by forced
penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/
but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can't tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life

By: June Jordan

African-American poet, novelist, and playwright June Jordan wrote for all ages, but her concern for children, especially African-American children, always stood out in her work. In terms of writing for young adults, she is well known for His Own Where, a novel offering hope for those who live in poverty; but Jordan has also created distinguished poetic work for children, including Who Look at Me. In addition to aiming some of her own writings at young readers, Jordan has made efforts to help children write, leading workshops for African-American and Hispanic youngsters and editing a collection of some of their work with Terri Bush in The Voice of the Children. June Jordan, born in 1936, was a revolutionary outspoken, brilliant, talented writer, educator, and activist, who before her death also founded "Poetry for the People" and participated in anti-globalization protests. Her subject matters included issues related to racism, sexism, classism, and many other topics. Jordan passed away in June, 2002, from breast cancer.
I picked this poem, because June Jordan expresses the worth of women throughout her poem. This poem to me captures her voice, pain, rage, and resolution pertaining to a woman’s minds and emotions.

"Puppy Love" My Prose Poem

Puppy Love (Prose Poem)

Back when I was a little girl, I fell in love with my first crush. I met him in the sandbox during recess and by naptime; I planned our whole life together. We were to be married July 17, 2006 at my family church. I would walk down the aisle wearing a stunning white gown holding my dad’s arm and he would be waiting for me in his all black tuxedo. After the exchanging of our vows, we would live happily ever after like all the fairytales I read about. However, my fairytale started to change towards the end of the day, when my crush on this boy started to fade away. My crush started to fade away, when I seen his best friend walking my way.

"Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning"

"Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning"

Looking down into my fathers
dead face
for the last time
my mother said without
tears, without smiles
but with civility
"Good night, Willie Lee, Ill see you
in the morning."
And it was then I knew that the healing
of all our wounds
is forgiveness
that permits a promise
of our return
at the end.

By: Alice Walker

I picked this poem, because I believe it is an great interpretation of a elegy poem. Because how the woman knows her husband is dead, but she still looks down at him and say “I’ll see you in the morning.” Walker uses this poem to display the destructive results of a woman's need for a love relationship with a man. Her images of pain and death, suggest the physical and mental stress on a woman in this double bind. Walker uses this poem to show the continuing vulnerability of heart and body, but we also see hints of an emerging awareness of woman's equal need, and increasing ability, to resist abuse.

Juke Box Love Song

Juke Box Love Song

I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

By: Langston Hughes

I love this poem, because Langston Hughes uses a literary point to explain the love he has for Harlem and a pass relationship. I love this poem, because it is basically Langston Hughes’s view of jazz and his environment in relation to Harlem, New York. The environment in which everything is represented makes it very clear that all of these elements are detailed very clearly through descriptive words and he still involves his acts against stereotyping in general in the poem by stating,” Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.” To me this part talks about a pass relationship in Harlem that Langston Hughes had and this poem was a way for him to reminisce on the times they spent together.

Lost "Free Verse"

I woke up this morning with something on my mind,
but it all was lost according to time.

I woke up this morning,
trying to grasp what I lost.

But time currputed my mind and
the thought was lost.

Coal

Coal

I
is the total black, being spoken
from the earth's inside.
There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into a words, coloured
by who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open like a diamond
on glass windows
singing out within the crash of sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart -
and come whatever will all chances
the stub remains
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders. Other know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me

Love is word, another kind of open.
As the diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am Black because I come from the earth's inside
Now take my word for jewel in the open light.

By: Audre Lorde


Audre Lorde was born in 1934 in New York to parents of West Indian heritage. She passed away in 1992, a victim of breast cancer. Her battle with the disease, which was chronicled in works like The Cancer Journals, was just one of many struggles she had to deal with in life. Audre Lorde was a black homosexual female in a world dominated by white heterosexual males. She fought for justice on each of these minority fronts. Her writings protest against the swallowing of black American culture by an indifferent white population, against the perpetuation of sex discrimination, and against the neglect of the movement for gay rights. Her poetry, however, is not entirely political in content. It is extremely romantic in nature and is described by Joan Martin as ringing with, "passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling."

American writer Audre Lorde calls herself “a black feminist lesbian mother poet" because her identity is based on the relationship of many divergent perspectives once perceived as incompatible. Thematically, she expresses or explores pride, love, anger, fear, racial and sexual oppression, urban neglect, and personal survival. Moreover, she eschews a hope for a better humanity by revealing truth in her poetry. She states, "I feel have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain." Lorde was a prolific writer who continually explored the marginalization’s experienced by individuals in a society fearful of differences.
In the poem “Coal," the controlling metaphor of coal, staple fuel, celebrates "the total black, being spoken/From the earth's inside," which becomes in its idealized form, the jewel, diamond. In the this reading, the poem's final visionary lines . . . claim their political identity precisely through an empowering biologism. . . . For Black American poets it meant a call to a poetics of Blackness which emphasized the role of poet as activist and leader and the role of poetry as expression of an intrinsically Black vision.

"Wise I"

Wise I

WHY's (Nobody Know
The Trouble I Seen)
Trad.

If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your oom boom ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
oom boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble

humph!

probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!

By: Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka was born in Newark, New Jersey, where his father worked as a postman and lift operator. He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard Universities, leaving without a degree, and at the New School for Social Research. His major fields of study were philosophy and religion. Baraka also served three years in the U.S. Air Force as a gunner. Baraka continued his studies of comparative literature at Columbia University. He has taught at a number of universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo.
In 1956 Baraka began his career as a writer, activist, and advocate of black culture and political power. In 1958 he founded Totem Press. In Harlem he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre, which presented poetry readings, concerts, and produced a number of plays. The theatre was disbanded in 1966 and Baraka set up in Newark the Spirit House, a black community theatre (also known as the Heckalu Community Centre). In 1968 Baraka founded the Black Community Development and Defense Organization. He has also been Secretary-General of the National Black Political Assembly and Chairman of the Congress of African People. Doing his life time, Baraka published over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist novels.
I love the poem “Wise” by Baraka, because creatively and critically explores issues of racism, national oppression and colonialism.

Speeding Ticket Haiku

Cruising in the streets
I start to hear beep, beep, beep
damn it's the police.

I Sit and Sew

I Sit and Sew

I sit and sew-- a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams--
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath--
But-- I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew-- my heart aches with desire--
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe--
But-- I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me-- this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me-- God, must I sit and sew?

By: Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 19 July 1875, Alice Ruth Moore was the daughter of Patricia Wright, a seamstress, and Joseph Moore, a merchant marine, and, due to her middle-class social status and racially mixed appearance, she enjoyed the diverse culture of the city. She graduated Straight University (now Dillard University) in 1892 and began her career as a teacher in the public school system of New Orleans. In 1895, Dunbar-Nelson published her first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales. Although many of the pieces were obviously marked by her inexperience, I Sit and Sew reveal her gift for capturing the language, setting, and pathos peculiar to New Orleans life at the turn of the century. I love Dunbar-Nelson poetry, because her message addresses the issues that confronted African-Americans and women of her time. In this poem, Dunbar-Nelson challenges the period's stereotypical leftist image of the proletarian as a burly, half-naked industrial worker. Her proletarian is a woman, an office worker whose daily confinement is painfully at odds with her yearning for "beautiful things"--the consolations of art and the sensual pleasures of a middle-class dream-life. Like her poetry, Dunbar-Nelson's political activism encompassed many forms

On Stripping Bark From Myself

On Stripping Bark From Myself
By: Alice Walker

Because women are expected to keep silent about
their close escapes I will not keep silent
and if I am destroyed (naked tree) someone will
please
mark the spot
where I fall and know I could not live
hearing their "how nice she is!"
whose adoration of the retouched image
I so despise.

No. I am finished with living
for what my mother believes
for what my brother and father defend
for what my lover elevates
for what my sister, blushing, denies or rushes
to embrace.

I find my own
small person
a standing self
against the world
an equality of wills
I have lived to understand.

Besides:

My struggle was always against
an inner darkness: I carry within myself
the only known keys
to my death - to unlock life, or close it shut
forever. A woman who loves wood grains, the colour
yellow
and the sun, I am happy to fight
all outside murderers
as I see I must.


Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth and last child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker, who were sharecroppers. When Alice Walker was eight years old, she lost sight of one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident. In high school, Alice Walker was valedictorian of her class, and that achievement, coupled with a "rehabilitation scholarship" made it possible for her to go to Spelman, a college for black women in Atlanta, Georgia. After spending two years at Spelman, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and during her junior year traveled to Africa as an exchange student. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965. Alice Walker was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, and in the 1990's she is still an involved activist. Alice Walker is most known for her novel "The Color Purple," which she received a Pulitzer Prize in 1983.

This poem embrace the pain of being in relationships between women and men. This poem speaks to women who sacrifice themselves in order to maintain relationships with their men. I love this poem, because it allows women to define themselves for themselves despite their environments or situation.

Aunt Jennifer's Tiger

Aunt Jennifer's Tiger

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

By: Andrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich was born on May 16, 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1951. In 1953, she married Harvard University economist Alfred H. Conrad. Two years later, she published her second volume of poetry, The Diamond Cutters. After having three sons before the age of thirty, Rich gradually changed both her life and her poetry. Throughout the 1960s she wrote several collections, including Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963) and Leaflets (1969). The content of her work became increasingly confrontational—exploring such themes as women’s role in society, racism, and the Vietnam War. The style of these poems also revealed a shift from careful metric patterns to free verse. Adrienne Rich wrote the poem “Aunt Jennifer‘s Tigers, “to explain a woman’s struggle to accept the indignities of her daily life and using sewing as an escape. In the poem, Jennifer has control over her tigers in her sewing, but her husband has control over her in reality. And the reason she creates tigers, because they are fearless and exotic unlike her. Her world is more domestic and she has to be submissive to her husband. I love this poem, because the images are images are strong and express the overall message. Since Aunt Jennifer is being control, she finds freedom in her explosion of fabric with her tigers.

Order Up Free Entry 3/2/2010

Have you seen my status?
I am about to let the weakest link Go lol.

To cook a man
Prep: 20 minutes Bake1hour and15 minutes Oven: 350 f
6x8 Baking pan Cool: 30 minutes Serves: 1

• Preheat the oven to 350 f
• Allow the man to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes
• Grease the 6 x8 square feet baking pan and set it aside
• Start to grease the man’s elbows for four minutes or until thick
• In a small saucepan heat and stir his lies until they melt
• Before inserting the man into the baking pan, begin to trim the fat
• Gradually cut off his phone, twitter, myspace and facebook page
• Once done, place him in the oven and cook for 1hour and15 minutes
• Cook until golden brown
• When he’s golden brown take him out the oven and let him cool for 30 minutes
• Or until he’s ready to serve

By: Shanterica Brooks

Digging

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney was born in April 1939, the eldest nine children. His father owned and worked a small farm in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Heaney's mother came from a family from the modern world than with the traditional rural economy. Heaney left the farm life, when he attended St. Columb's College, Derry in 1957 to continue his studies. In 1961 Heaney graduated from Queen's University and became a teacher at St. Joseph's College of Education. In 1966 he became a lecturer at Queen University. At Queen University, Heaney's published his first book called, Eleven Poems in 1965 and later the poem “Digging” in 1966.
I love the poem “Digging,” because Heaney uses nature to depict his ancestor’s cultural background. To me this poem has two different meanings. To me the first meaning of this poem explains how he uses his pen as his instrument. The second meaning of the poem deals with Heaney family. Heaney uses this poem to describe his connection between his grandfather and father, while searching for his own identity through their cultural background. I love how Heaney uses a semantic structure when comparing writing poetry to digging on a farm. This to me is brilliant and shows a great example of how to play on words in a poem.

Free Entry

Couplet For the Soul

You are the fire that burns my soul
and I am the frost that eases your pain.

Wishes For Sons

wishes for sons

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.

By: Lucille Clifton

Thelma Lucille Sayles later Lucille Clifton was born June 27, 1936, in Depew, New York. At the age of sixteen, Clifton graduated high school. She later won a scholarship to Howard University. D.C. During Clifton's college experience she met some of the people that influenced her life, and exposed her to writing. As a result, Clifton became recognized as a widely respected poet. Besides the poem, I recently talked about in my blog “Homage to My Hips,” I also love “Wishes for Sons.” I believe the word choice Clifton uses to describe the pain women endure provide great details to this poem. This can be shown in the first stanza. “i wish them cramps./i wish them a strange town/and the last tampon./I wish them no 7-11.” These first lines provide emphasis to the actions of women, while focusing on the concept of the poem. This poem to me allows men to experience the hard work it takes to be a woman through literature. The reason I picked this poem is because it allows men to understand the pain women go through and the affects it has on our body and mood.

Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem

Sonnet to A Negro In Harlem

You are disdainful and magnificent--
Your perfect body and your pompous gait,
Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate;
Small wonder that you are incompetent
To imitate those whom you so dispise--
Your shoulders towering high above the throng,
Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song,
Palm trees and manoes stretched before your eyes.
Let others toil and sweat for labor's sake
And wring from grasping hands their meed of gold.
Why urge ahead your supercilious feet?
Scorn will efface each footprint that you make.
I love your laughter, arrogant and bold.
You are too splendid for this city street!

By: Helene Johnson

Helene Johnson was on born July 7, 1906, in Boston, Massachusetts to Ella Benson Johnson and George William Johnson. She was an only child, and her parents separated shortly after her birth, so she never knew her father or his family. Johnson moved to New York in 1927 and attended Columbia University’s Extension Division where she studied to become a novelist. Her writing career started in 1924, when she submitted the poem “Trees at Night” to an urban magazine. Johnson continued to write and as a result sixteen of her poems were published in numerous magazines and anthologies. This lead to Helene Johnson being considered to be one of the youngest poets’s associated with the Harlem Renaissance. To me her strongest poem is “Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem, which was published in 1927. This poem highlights the issues of what defines an African American during the Harlem Renaissance. The word she uses is genuine and creates an expression of racial pride. This poem to me symbolizes the inspirational of black people and their contributions to society.

First Kiss "Free Verse"

First Kiss

It’s a game or should I say a tease.
As people anticipate that special moment and what it may bring.
Scared to take the first step, because pushy one will seem,
so they wait to see whose brave enough to break the tension that’s in-between.
When that moment comes, it’s like a dream.
But until that moment comes, the first kiss
remains a mystery that will be wondrous to behold.

By Shanterica Brooks