BART Connects: Sehinne Yohannes' poetry is inspired by BART
"The Bay is my siren. It pulls me in towards murky waters of Lake Merritt and tells me I am a spring."
Discover more BART Connects stories at bart.gov/bartconnects.
By the time the train hums into 16th St. Station, recent high school grad Sehinne Yohannes has scribbled some solid one-liners. Nothing's concrete, but she’s got the first rumblings of a concept or idea or phrase that could blossom from a wisp on the page into a poem.
Sehinne wrote these lines on BART. The poem that grew from them was the first to “break the nine barrier” at the 2025 Brave New Voices slam poetry festival, meaning every judge scored Sehinne's piece a nine or above. Sehinne’s group, Team Bay Area, took home first place.
BART takes Sehinne from San Leandro to 16th St. Mission every week for her internship at Youth Speaks, a nonprofit in the Mission that gives young people space to unearth, develop, and amplify their voices. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey, and for Sehinne, the journey is where much of the work happens.
“Transit became something I started writing about when I realized I was always writing on it," she said. "BART has always given me a safe space to write and be inspired and be creative."
In her “BART poem,” Sehinne personifies BART as her “second uncle, twice removed on my city’s side.” He’s reliable, a little eccentric, and always there for her.
“BART was made for people like me who were raised by their city,” she writes. “He shows up late and he shows up loud, but he shows up for me always. And that just might be the most Bay thing about him.”
Now in her last year of high school, Sehinne’s starting to think about life beyond the Bay.
“It being my senior year and all and not really knowing where I’ll end up, whenever I ride BART now it’s really just trying to capture a memory of everything see so I can take it with me everywhere I go,” she said.
About BART Connects
Tens of millions of people ride BART every year -- to work, dates, practice, friends, and fun. BART Connects tells their stories.
In June, BART Communications launched the second edition of BART Connects, a storytelling series that features real BART riders who span generations, neighborhoods, and walks of life. You can read their stories below.
In the coming months, the stars of BART Connects will take us for a ride in a series of video featurettes that will be regularly posted on BART social media.
You will also see the faces of BART Connects riders in advertising spaces in the BART System and across the region.
BART Connects grew out of a call for rider stories BART Communications launched in 2023 to learn how our transit system impacts people’s lives. The initial response made clear that BART means something to those who ride it.
Have a cool BART story to share? Submit a short summary at bart.gov/story. You may be the next BART Connects feature!