By Button Poetry
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Usman Hameedi, performing at IWPS 2019 in San Diego, CA.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
March 12th, 2019,
00:04
the college admission scandal.
00:06
Wealthy parents paid consultants to cheat their kid’s way into college.
00:10
And I laughed.
00:12
Silly me for writing disadvantaged background essays
00:15
so admissions would take pity on my poverty,
00:17
when dead presidents write the best recommendation letters.
00:20
Scandal is a funny word for known facts.
00:23
I’ve sat next to students
00:24
with the last names of buildings and departments,
00:26
seats earned from their parents’ gold-plated bootstraps,
00:29
born at the last lap, full ride without even seeing the track,
00:32
looking at us like we should be thankful we got invited to the race.
00:35
My invitation was a scholarship,
00:37
a whole comma over from my parents’ annual income.
00:39
But tuition-free isn’t the same as blank check.
00:42
With scholarships, you are a walking diversity poster,
00:45
must be photogenic for the alumni page.
00:47
make the melanin offset the racist mascot,
00:50
still end up meeting Auntie Sally Mae to Navient through college.
00:53
The debt I’ve amassed is so massive
00:55
I could have down paid on a mansion.
00:57
But who am I to not run?
00:58
I want to make my parents’ sacrifices worth it.
01:00
I earned a bachelor’s in resourcefulness, a master’s in the academic hustle,
01:04
now applying for PhDs in situational alchemy,
01:07
my thesis turning recycled soda bottle deposits into doctorates.
01:10
and yet my success always feels doctored.
01:12
Lori and Felicity are seen as desperate housewives,
01:15
trying to build full houses for their kids,
01:17
but mothers crossing borders to build futures out of factory work,
01:20
degrees out of Green Cards and chances out of homelessness
01:24
are seen as leeches to the system.
01:26
So when that scandal broke,
01:28
I laughed so hard,
01:30
I could almost drown out the loudness of my envy,
01:34
paid in full green with jealousy.
01:36
I wish for that level of certainty,
01:38
to know the grass will always be green,
01:40
because generational wealth grew gardens
01:43
well before I was even a seedling,
01:45
the luxury of strolling
01:47
to the finish line.
01:49
(cheers and applause)
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video