Book excerpt: A debut poetry collection by Vida Cross referencing her ancestry as a third generation Chicagoan, a Bronzeville resident, the artwork of Archibald J. Motley Jr., and the poetic research of Langston Hughes. The people who inhabit Cross' Poetry are alive and full of energy, but in the creases that line their smiles, there's a certain exhaustion-- an anxiety brewing-- and a unique pain on the street corner, in the bedroom, and alone beating within the breast.