West Philly resident Siduri Beckman, Philadelphia’s first Youth Poet Laureate, has aimed her pen at Gov. Tom Corbett and state Republicans for education budget cuts that have disproportionately hurt poorer school districts. In A Word from the Cripples, which she gave us permission to reprint below, Beckman, a graduate of Penn Alexander and a Masterman ninth grader, speaks for the city’s public school students, the ones most impacted by the cuts.

The poem has received national attention – for good reason.

A Word from the Cripples

by Siduri Beckman

Siduri Beckman (Photo by Albert Yee Photo and reprinted from the Generocity website.)

I’ve got something
to say.
It won’t take long
Just as long as it took you
to snatch everything away
One fourth of the body is
the leg
You have crippled us
Cursing us to hobble
all of our lives.

You see us as a problem
the classic class problem
INNER CITY streaked like mud across our faces
they’re all on the street anyway.

Thrusting fear
into our hearts
Why make us feel
so small
helpless
Forgotten by the people
whose duty it is to remember

Turn your back on your city
that chose not to choose
you
Because they feared
and now do all fears dawn true.

We will show ourselves to be
as formidable a foe
as all of those frackers
who you refuse to tax.

Dismiss us
We cannot vote.
But in this country
we can speak.