Tony Medina

Tony Medina
 
Broke Beach Bum
 
All I listen to now
Is the ocean.
 
Nothing else comes
Close
 
Except for the sand
Sifting through my
 
Ears like an hourglass
And the fish—
 
Those god awful fish—
With their Edward G.
 
Robinson mugs—
Mwah, mwah, see—
 
Puckering up to
Kiss me.
 
 
 
Tony Medina is Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University. Two-time winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People for DeShawn Days (2001) and I and I, Bob Marley (2009), he is the author of a number of books for adults and young people, including An Onion of Wars (2012) and Broke Baroque (2013), finalist for the Julie Suk Book Award. He recently received the Langston Hughes Society Award from the College Language Association and the first African Voices Literary Award. Medina recently edited an anthology of poetry on police brutality, Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky (Jacar Press, 2016). Look for his work at tonymedina.org.