god made the hundreds, man made it wild*
BY NATE MARSHALL

them mama tell them
it wild over there
she say over there buses quit
running like utilities
or resources
or dead boys

in them hundreds
they schools lock doors
after the tardy bell
like prison

standards is low like
the waistline of uniform pants
dropout rates is high
dropouts is high
like them girls shorts come the month of May

for them police officers is hall monitors

them businesses over there fail
like the schools
most all fail
except liquor stores
them never close

over there them streets burning
them blocks hot
them people fired
it wild

them police over there is overworked
and not working
they don’t got enough of them
them they do got too busy sitting
in walgreens parking lot
trying to avoid the fire

*The Hundreds is a nickname for the Far South Side of Chicago. The name was given in the 80s and 90s because of the crime the area became known for. This slogan was made popular by a local t-shirt company in that neighborhood.

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Nate Marshall is from the South Side of Chicago. He was the star of the award winning full-length documentary Louder Than A Bomb and has been featured on HBO’s Brave New Voices. He is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan and received his BA at Vanderbilt University. His work has appeared in Learn Then Burn, Vinyl Poetry, The Spoken Word Revolution: Redux, on Chicago Public Radio and in many other publications. Nate has performed poetry at venues and universities across the US, Canada, and South Africa. He is also a rapper.