Read like a Writer:Won't be but a Minute by Patricia Smith

one of the main tools the writer uses is a kind of written southern ebonics to give a sense of who is is talking in the poem. the poem is structured so that just about each line ends with a period or a comma to give a kind of slowness to the whole peace. she also uses dashes instead of quotation marks when talking about what the news reporters said. it makes it seem like the character in the story is changing their speech to sound like their putting an infuses on those direct words. also some of the sentences are very short and then transition to the next line, adding to the effect of the "voice" of the poem being slow.