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Collaborative Poem

In class at the jail we worked together to define what it means to be scared. Our poem is below:

Scared Is…

Scared is someone else controlling my fate without knowing who I am
Scared is a key that doesn’t work
Scared is not knowing what tomorrow brings
Scared is falling in a hole you can’t get out of
Scared is an unknown army of haunting fears
Scared is being left alone like a lost child
Scared is looking forward to avoid looking back.

Student Work Wednesday

Found Poem: Inmate Handbook By B.

The officer is always right
Inmates will not fight
Privileges are not rights
Nothing is allowed on the light

Order in the facility
It is your responsibility
Pictures will not depict nudity
Inmates will not exert authority
Ask permission to shower in the dormitory.


“Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.

A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.” –from poets.org