community circle: success academy blues
by MIGUEL BYRD
in Spring 2026
Neville Barbour II, “Lord of the Flys,” 2021
community circle: success academy blues
We are a Blues People
Not grounded
In the red, white, and blue of
The amerikkkan flag, and
Cannot be captured
By the blue and orange you wear
Every day in uniform
The blues
Has a way of being in a
Space but not of a space;
The blues is irrevocably
Black.
The blues
Asks how can we sing when
We are in a strange land;
The Sound of the past, present,
And the future.
The blues
The voice of Africa having
A conversation with itself
On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean
Part of our collective being
That could never be stripped away,
A way of being that allowed us to
Critique western modernity.
The blues
Is how we got over.
How we will always be here
No matter what the worst of
Settler-colonialism, enslavement,
Dispossession, mass incarceration, or
Any form of enclosure had for
Us.
The blues
Knows that anti-blackness is fundamental
To the construction of the modern world.
And it still proceeds to transcend material
Conditions of the modern world to remind
Us that the spirit of blackness is a rock
In a weary land.
The blues
African people did not just sit in despair
They used the best of who they have been
Since time immemorial to repeatedly be
Reborn in a land that has continuously
Made new ways to kill them with
Every generation.
The blues
Calling us like Lucille Clifton
“come celebrate with me”
Every day they have tried
And failed to end us.
Starshine and clay
Know no end.
The blues
Tells us that the sun keeps shining
And the river keeps flowing
The blues
Holds on to the unchanging hand
Of eternity and lifts us up along
The way.
We are a blues people
Not because of what
Has been done to us
But who we have decided
To be despite what has been done.
If we
Listen, it just
Might save our lives.
Miguel Byrd is a 5th grade history teacher from Elizabeth, New Jersey. His love of poetry was reignited when he spent several weeks teaching the art form to second graders a couple years ago. The enthusiasm and willingness around poetry that his students expressed sent him back to revisit the works of Sterling Allen Brown, Sonia Sanchez, and René Depestre. He spends his time away from teaching focused primarily on reading literature dealing with who Africans are to each other, working towards ways to apply conceptual categories from the Africana Studies framework to each lesson plan.
