Creative Reading Exercise: Write a poem that borrows from, imitates, or emulates one of the poems this week, thematically and/or stylistically. For example, your own version of a prose poem letter to white america (Smith) or a list poem of alternate names for ____fill in the blank_____ (Smith), or an instruction poem (Parker), etc.
16 Responses to Week 6 Poems
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( after Smith’s “alternate names for black boys”)
Alternate names for the first-generation
1. The shining star
2. The weight of all their life’s work
3. imposter
4. In on affirmative action
5. A step forward
6. Daughter of an immigrant (take that as you will)
7. Two steps back
8. The exotic perspective
9. The poor person’s point of view
10. Guilty, always guilty
11. Pathfinder
12. Community builder
13. A threat to white people’s acceptance rates
14. The enemy
15. Undeserving
16.Checks all the minority boxes
17. My mom’s pride and joy
a song in the uncertain
(modeled after “a song in the front yard” by Gwendolyn Brooks)
I’ve stayed in the uncertain most of my life.
I want a peek at the cozy knowing
With fire in the hearth and meal-prepped dinners.
A girl shakes her leg under the table.
I want to be certain now
And know that I get to stay here
To get a job after I graduate college.
I want to feel peace today.
They don’t have to care so much
Their minds pace with other worries.
My mother snaps, but I insist it’s not fine
That they get to study-abroad and work internships.
My mother, she tells me that I can
Be just be happy and grateful that I’m here
That it would be worse off had we not moved
(On account that the government is corrupting).
But, I’m still not fine. Honestly, I can’t be.
And I can forget sometimes and be busy as a bee
And keep up academically and prove my worth
And hold out hope that the injustice will resolve itself.
Alternate Names for These Years
1. purple crocus transplanted
2. morning sun through blinds
3. sand in the mouth
4. the world tangible and real
5. frightened until the rise
6. teeth tied to the door
7. frightened until the birth
8. dew as gems
9. ferns unfurling
10. knitting the bones back together
11. Do it twice
12. Do it again
13. Do until sunset
14. Do until death
15. Bated joy and bated breath
alternate names for college students
1. foggy mornings
2. music played on full volume
3. never waking up early enough
4. also never getting enough sleep
5. raiding dining halls on Thursday nights
6. that spot over by the boathouse
7. calling Mom every other day
8. getting breakfast with friends
9. somehow always having homework due “tomorrow”
10. DoorDash
11. nature walks around campus
12. feeling homesick
13. taking the PVTA
14. the choice between sweatpants and jeans
15. missing my dogs
16. missing my friends
17. missing my family
18. making this place my new home
Dos and Donts for the Modern Woman (Who is Over Staying Woke)
DO buy a plant!
Freshen up the room! Open the window, set it on the sill. Feel the breeze brush across your face, then over to shake the branches of the tree in front of your dorm. Listen to mother nature, how she sings, and feel at one.
DONT leave the window open too long!
You might hear her distant wail, the way she mourns her rain forest, her late marshes and reefs, the orphaned schoolboys and fox kits. You might notice how CHCs and CO2 aren’t all that is trapped in her atmosphere, that you are too. Don’t listen for too long, you might catch something you didn’t want to hear.
DO place that Shein order!
Eat at Chik-fil-A. Become a Clean-Girl, It-Girl. Subscribe to whatever microtrend your heart desires.
DONT forget to have fun!
Remember: there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, right?
DO avoid the news.
Repost your friend’s stories about the latest national tragedy. Vote democrat, but don’t worry who it is. Agree to disagree.
DONT worry too much about it.
After all, what can one person do? When the children’s cries for salvation get too loud, turn your headphones volume to max. When the mother asks you to look her in the eye, when the girl your age working the sweatshop to make the top you’re wearing asks for help, ask in return, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Inspired by “If You Are Over Staying Woke” by Morgan Parker.
Modeled after “Ring” by Saddiq Dzukogi.
I stuck all of the people I love into a book together.
I put them there one at a time, with a pencil and
with a pen–their faces shine back out at me if I look hard.
Few look as they usually do, only just wrong.
This book of mine comes with me everywhere, carried
in my backpack, my tote, pressed in my arms.
I give them back to myself in this book–I let myself
have them, their faces and speech making up a version
of that I get to have with me. The difference throws their absence
under a spotlight. I sit, draw the way her hand drifts up,
remember how she waves it as she speaks, pulling me in,
how she leans back when she makes the point. She
is full of this motion–noise and body follow her thought–
I draw the pose as well as I can remember
without her here with me. How well can my book recreate
something that does not pretend to be still?
“a song in the schoolyard”
modeled after “a song in the front yard”
Daddy said he should’ve sent me to private school
When I came home that day
Because Georgie bled out in the parking lot
And the stain left a big red spot
That we saw on the pavement
When the ambulance took him
And the police car took the other
Weeping like Georgie’s mother
Probably did when she found out
That he had been slashed in the schoolyard
While we stopped running the mile
And each face lost its smile
Because we thought Georgie was dead
So we sat there in shock
And they sent us back to class
As if we could forget the blood on the grass
Because it dripped all across the yard
Leaving its sickly sight for all to see
It didn’t come out for weeks
Despite all the cleaning techniques
And my mother said that school was trouble
But there was nowhere else to go
So every morning I got out of bed
And walked across the pavement with the red
Front yard (inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks’ “a song in the front yard”)
I recollect my memories of the twists and turns to my childhood home
Home, I thought so too, hoping to find everything just the way I left it
My bear ‘Honey’ laying at the foot of my bed underneath my favorite cotton blanket
My walls a peach color from when I was twelve and restless of change
The lawn grass overgrown and weeds sprouting out of the cracks in our driveway
I pull into the driveway and I feel home sick
The front yard is fresh cut with red hydrangeas over flowing the porch
No weeds to pick out of the crevices in the pavement
I slam the door with force as I feel the emotion dripping out of me
The door handle feels too small
I walk in to see a sign ‘shoes off inside’
Only for me to see a flashback of seven year old me running around in my dirty converse with my mom chasing me
A renovation of the house would be understatement
The memory of a place that used to be my childhood home has dissapated into a nostalgic grief
My mother walks in with a sweet smile, unbeknownst to the constricted airflow in my chest
‘How do you like the place? Just like home.’
Home
The second I saw the front yard I knew this place was no longer home
Only it was solidified when Honey was thrown out for being ‘childish’
I’ll never understand why
Why my mother felt the need to escape the memory of happy times
Erase a past life in order to sleep at night
Change an era in time
Banish unfamilarity from her life
Knowing it would bleed into mine
I’ll never call this place my home
Along with my front yard that has forgotten the pattern of my footsteps
alternate names for overthinkers
(modeled after Danez Smith’s “alternate names for black boys”)
1. spoiled orange juice
2. poets
3. the doubt of trust
4. a mesh bag filled with sand
5. bravery in a sophisticated form
6. silent until introverted becomes recognized
7. the past
8. (where is my mind?)
9. an untied shoelace dragged through the mud
10. a mother’s projections on her daughter
11. music played at 10:41 pm
12. melting ice
13. do not disturb
14. loquacious…or
15. a papercut
16. sweating in a hoodie
17. symptoms of an unreal condition
Script
(inspired by “Ring” by Saddiq Dzukogi)
I put pen to paper and I put fingertip to clicking plastic and I fill
the white space of a page with the souls of my family
who are no longer here to take up space next to me
but take up so much space in the blue-light of a ghostly late-night
computer screen. I could pour the ink of memories
from my heart to my hands to my eyes because what is the point
of writing about love and loved ones and missing
and missed ones if I do not let myself cry?
I place my love and my missing in the hearts and the hands
and the eyes of a stick-figure character in a play,
and the mouths, so they can say what I could not.
They have chances I did not. They have goodbyes
and reflections and understandings that I did not.
Beautiful, isn’t it? Is it? How we recognize that the loss
of people is also a loss of moments and a loss
of some part of ourselves that twined around other hearts
like ivy. What if this is death’s hobby:
gardening, weeding us, cutting ivy?
Inspired By “If You Are Over Staying Woke”
Find the
right time to
tell them
how you
feel. No,
not now, they’ve
already
changed the
subject. Make sure
you didn’t
hurt their
feelings. They don’t
even remember what
you were talking
about. Did you
respond to the
last text? They’ve
already sent
another. Like
their post, make sure
yours looks
good. They probably
won’t see it. Did
you turn in
that assignment?
Make sure to
finish reading. I
hope they saw
my text. Don’t look
turn on do not disturb
keep checking
anyways
anyways I
need to get dinner.
Anyways
alternate names for mestizas (inspired by Danez Smith)
1. beaner
2. but also gringa
3. “your Spanish is good” (for an American)
4. hija de las raíces
5. sexual object
6. stealer of opportunity
7. daughter of every Tía (especially not your own)
8. dancer of sword-blades
9. ‘yo no sabo’ kid
10. the beauty standard, but too curvy to ever be ‘beautiful’
11. first-born child of grittiness
12. wild
13. untamed
14. yet far too constrained by herself
Conflict
Inspired by “If You Are Over Staying Woke” by Morgan Parker
Turn on your
favorite movie
Take a walk
buy a small drink and
sit in a cafe
trying
not to read
the newest analysis.
Balance the
rationality of
education with the fact
you have to be well to
graduate. And
don’t forget to call
your dad, read
the newsletters
ignore the
newsletters
Block liberally,
accounts, posts,
the blinding light
that comes in
the morning
when you spent
last night
crying
and just want
to sleep.
alternative names for indian girls
1. too hairy to love
2. unadmired and unwanted
3. a mother’s worst nightmare
4. overachievers-determined, yet too head strong
5. running forever
6. neglected and abandoned
7. battered and beaten with
8. doves, but too dark to be doves, too ugly to be doves
9. firecrackers; never stop yapping
10. runners
11. disgustingly undesirable
12. a mother’s reflection
13. sold for parts
14.
15. running way- abandoners
16. my prized possessions
17. my sisters
a song in the front yard
(modeled after Gwendolyn Brooks’ “a song in the front yard”)
trampoline and lawn chairs aslant
a ride-on pink barbie jeep with a bad parking job
a football abandoned within the grass
a playset, swings swaying in the wind
this song in your front yard is my favorite
not the songs you play when you turn your speaker on
those irritate; all I wanted was fresh air, a cool breeze
but now my house is yours.
no, I prefer the song in your front yard after
you’ve returned inside, tired from yelling at your children
behind you, while you sit, can in hand.
I love seeing your home without you in it, I guess
because, for me, the song of my childhood was in the backyard
hidden and isolated by the house and the trees; a secret, protected
I admire your confidence and the blind publicity of your children’s childhood
your unabashed expansion of your home
how somehow the traffic of our busy corner doesn’t scare you
how you trust the drivers and their cars to stay on the pavement
Dear white america,
I was forced into your arms at a mere eight months old,
Innocent, scared, lost.
I was told to be thankful.
I was told to love you.
Because I was one of the “lucky ones”.
But the funny thing is,
I didn’t ask to be part of America.
I didn’t ask to be stripped into a country that would never accept me.
I didn’t ask to be called names my parents couldn’t even repeat.
To have strangers yell at my face,
To be blamed for a pandemic,
Just for being born into a home that I haven’t been back to since I was a kid.
To see people who look like me murdered in nail salons,
I didn’t ask for this.
Don’t you see how confusing it is?
Inspired by “dear white america” by Danez Smith