TESS KELLY, 18
Tess Kelly is an activist, performance poet, and writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She considers herself an unreasonable optimist who believes in the power of young people to execute change in her city, her country, and her world. Kelly is passionate about the beauty and vibrancy of her beloved city of Cleveland and intends to dedicate herself to the betterment of the CLE. She loves being a part of the local music and arts scene, attending open mics, poetry slams, and supporting local artists however she can.
Aside from passions for her city and for the written word, Kelly also loves hip hop and exploring the intersection between music and poetry. She is a dedicated reform Jew and the daughter of Lorain County’s first female rabbi. The commitment to and promotion of social justice is the facet of Judaism that Kelly loves most. A principle that guides much of Kelly’s work from the Talmud, in the Mishnah Sanhedrin, it is written, “one who saves a single life has saved the entire world.” Kelly believes in the sanctity of every human life and the beauty of every person’s reality and strives to be compassionate and open-minded. She will not abide injustice and will forever stand for her brothers and sisters of color and for those less privileged than she. Kelly is honored to be joining the International Congress again this year and hopes to bring her passions to a global stage and take what she learns back to her local community.
OUR TUPAC KILLS HIMSELF IN THIS ONE
A Slam Poem
by Rachel Kelly
Winner of Cleveland Youth Poetry Slam
Our lives are going nowhere
And we want everyone to know that we don’t care
We’re all repping our cities
We’d all die for our cities
We all wanna die
After midnight
We all smoking
Under streetlights
We started too young in this one
We fucked up our chances in this one
Our mentors get shot in this one
Our fathers get shot in this one
This one’s Z
Everybody’s free
Colored hair
Tattoos
Rainbows of sexualities
Everybody’s free to...
Overdose
ADD, anxiety
Misdiagnosis
These claustrophobic cities
This claustrophobic country
Beg humbly
In the school zone they’ll still
Take you out abruptly
We’re terrified in this one
We’re terrified in this one
But fear don’t look good on the face of a man
Or on that baby tryna stand
Like a grown-ass woman
We die of neglect in this one
We starve
We overfeed
We undersell our bodies
And we oversell our weed
In this one
Two little- culturally insensitive
One little- cultural appropriation
And then there were none
Soft cocaine to warm your soul
One little, two little
In this one
And at least our Tupac gets to kill himself
In this one
And at least we got self-determination
In this one
Futuristic and powerful
And towering and sorrowful
Call us the roiling coexistence of hope and desperation
Call us enslaved by technological fixation
You can call us the sign of the downfall of your nation
But whose fault was that?
Not a soul alive consented to his or hers or their creation
At least we’re free
In this one
There’s no guarantees
In this one
Truth, there’s nowhere else I wanna be
But this one
This year
This time we’re winning
We’ve been America’s last hope ever since the beginning
So sleep on that
Bet you can’t
We said “fuck Kellyanne”
And we didn’t apologize
Yeah I come from Orangewood
But I ain’t been suburbanized
You can call me the downfall
Of what you think your nation is
You can say I don’t understand
What my own agitation is
At least I’m alive
At least I decided
Not to kill myself
In this one
And at least I’ve got self-determination
In this one
Stop killing children!
Stop killing children with bullets
And their fathers with prison sentences
Stop killing the rappers and the poets
Whose rhythms represented them
Stop killing children with bullets
And their fathers with prison sentences
Stop killing the rappers and the poets
Whose rhythms represented them
And at least our Tupac GETS TO kill himself
In this one
That’s the only self-determination you can get
In this one
This one’s Z
Everybody’s free
To overdose
This time
This year
This time we’re winning
We’re America’s last hope
And we know what you did in the beginning.