Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

James Weldon Johnson

Look heah! ‘Splain to me de reason
Why you said to Squire Lee,
Der wuz twelve ole chicken thieves
In dis heah town, includin’ me.
Ef he tole you dat, my brudder,
He said sump’n dat warn’t true;
W’at I said wuz dis, dat der wuz
Twelve, widout includin’ you.

Oh!…!—

Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Fifty Years & Other Poems | The Cornhill Company, 1917

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Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

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