MLK 2025 – SDARJ Black History Month Celebration Photo Gallery
Published in the Cape Gazette
The Twin Poets took the breath out of the Epworth United Methodist Church room, the people in the pews taking in each of their powerful, rhythmic lines, and erupting into applause and praise after the “thank you” signifying each poem’s end.
Twin brothers Al Mills and Nnamdi Chukwuocha, known as the Twin Poets, are social workers, elected officials and spoken-word poets who were appointed as the 17th Poets Laureate of Delaware. They promote poetry throughout the state by introducing it into schools, community centers, detention centers and communities affected by gun violence.
The duo headlined the Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice’s Black History Month event Feb. 28, sharing poems they wrote about both their own experiences as Black men in America, and the stories of those around them, particularly Black youth living in inner-city Wilmington.
“My mind replays what my heart can’t delete,” the twins read. “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I just keep seeing my brother there, lying in the streets.”
The duo wrote the poem, titled “Tuesday’s Trauma,” for a little girl named Madeline, from west Wilmington, who used to come to their writing workshops and was the life and joy of the program – until she lost her older brother to gun violence a few years ago. He was killed on the same street as her school bus stop, just one block down.
“Every day, she was revisited by the trauma of her brother’s death,” Mills said. “She stopped writing, stopped coming to the poetry group, stopped going to school.”
The poem continued: “I know as an honor roll student I’m supposed to be stronger than this, but as my smiles disappeared, so did my strength. But they want me to show up to school like everything’s cool. But my bus stop is right up the block from where my brother was shot. So by the time we get there, I’m just not in the mood. And no matter what they say, they’re just gonna light up my fuse. So I’m staying home again, another day unexcused. See, things have been wrong for so long, I doubt they will ever get right. See, this is the impact that gun violence has on my life.”
The twins shared several more poems like these, highlighting the deep pain that so many Black Americans face.
