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Boy Poet, 12, Pens Love For Dad

MICHELE MARTIN, host:

Finally, we continue with our celebration of National Poetry Month, which we've been observing by bringing you the voices of a diverse variety of poets.

Today, our youngest poet yet. His name is Lorenzo Arce. Lorenzo is 12 years-old and he attends Percy Julian Middle School in a Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois.

Mr. LORENZO ARCE (Poet): The poem is called "If I Were Invisible." It was a project I had to do in class. Since a lot of children don't really express their feelings too much, I just thought it would be a great way to let it out, all my feelings that I've been bottling up.

(Reading) If I could go invisible, I would when I cry. I would when I got embarrassed, I would when I got scared and I would when I lost courage. But this, I know for sure, I will never hide from you. So when you are down and crying, I will be there at your side and I would never have a reason to ever want to hide.

I was thinking a lot about my dad. He was a lot of an inspiration. He's never embarrassed to let out his feelings, so I got a lot of inspiration from that.

MARTIN: Lorenzo Arce is our poet from Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park, Illinois. He is 12 years-old. Lorenzo's role model, dad, is Kevin Connelly(ph) Arce.

To read this poem and other poems in our series, please check out our Web site, the TELL ME MORE page, at npr.org.

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MARTIN: And our program's second anniversary is just around the corner, and that makes it a good time to think about what we've done well and what we might want to do differently in the next year. So you tell us, what do you love about TELL ME MORE and what could use some improvement?

To tell us more about what you think, you can call our comment line at 202-842-3522. That's 202-842-3522. Please remember to tell us your name. Or you can always go to our Web site, the TELL ME MORE page at npr.org and blog it out.

And that's our program for today. I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Let's talk more tomorrow. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.