Gwendolyn Brooks — A song In the Front Yard is a good poem

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life I want a peek at the back Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows A girl gets sick of a rose I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley To where the charity children play I want a good time today They do some wonderful things They have some wonderful fun My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae Will grow up to be a bad woman That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late (On account of last winter he sold our back gate) But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do And I’d like to be a bad woman, too And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face