Young neighborhood poets are filling the pavement of a City Heights alley with their words.
Samira Hassan’s poem “Land Displacement” surrounds her feet as she recites: “The Spaniards now wear blue and black, their faces still white ...”
She wrote it to the Kumeyaay people. She relates to their struggles with displacement and policing.
“They continue to shoot down the redtail hawks, leaving their bodies for the soil to soak up. They continue to place the black ravens in cells, watching them closely, never allowing them to peek at the skies that their flocks once soared,” she reads.
Hassan’s family immigrated to San Diego from Somalia before she was born.
Almost half of City Heights residents are foreign-born, but rising rents are pushing them out.
“Our people's graveyards no longer exist,” Hassan continues. “They've built their homes over it. Our families no longer live here. I know you're angry. So am I.”
Now 19, Hassan used to roller skate this alley outside the City Heights Recreation Center.
She tells herself that one day, she’ll return to the nearby house her family can no longer afford.
“I took my first steps in that home,” she said. “I learned how to read and write in that home. So it's really heartbreaking every time I drive past it. I always tell myself, ‘I'm going to come back, I'm going to buy my childhood house.’”
Hassan is one of five young City Heights participating poets — second generation Cambodian, Somalian and African American immigrants, a project spokesperson said. The other four poets are: Fatuma Fadhil, Aysia McWhorter, Zamzam Fadhil and Hidaya Saban.
They are leaving a message that will stay.
Even if they can’t.
“My poems and poems that describe me, my community, my womanhood, my Blackness, and aspects of my dreams, literally plastered, permanently plastered on this walkway,” she said. “It’s been a lot of tears. A lot of happy tears.”
They’re part of the “Back Alley Poetry Club.” They meet on Wednesday nights to workshop their poems and learn from older artists.
This public art installation, “Memoria Terra,” has been in the works since last year, led by artist Shinpei Takeda and the AjA project.
It’s funded by the California Arts Council as part of the state’s $60 million Creative Corps program.
The artists cut thousands of letters from heat-activated road marking material — similar to what’s used for traffic signs — and burn them into the pavement.
The poems should stay intact for at least two to five years, a spokesperson said.
Now, anyone who walks on this piece of City Heights will be faced with its history.
