House Vignette

My house is like a Lego fort we kept on finding pieces for. We have always had the foundation but the kitchen came later. Riping out the old yellowing and facek wood my father replaced with cherry and oak. The tiles like a hop scotch around the island of sinks and dishwashers. Then the dinning room to family room was found hiding between two paintings in the garage. Bt before all that we could see the TV from the hallway by our rooms. Mom always sent us to bed at the same time even if we weren't tired and the sun was still awake. So we always snuck out with blankets and pillows to watch TV from 20 feet away. And thats how she would find us every night. Asleep in a row at the hall enterence.

That hallway got so much use from us. Zack used to take his mattress and stand it up so it created a barrier and then we would run at it and try to climb before it fell. But one time it got to close to the light in the ceiling and shattered it. Angry mom always put an end to that game. But she would always start a new one at the beach with a smile and a half deflated tube.

Photo Vignette

They always say 'Smile now, no not that way.' But this time I got it right. No more do agains. Besides Abigail's knees are boney. Zack and lizzy strain against their seat belts to get in the picture. Mom is turned all the way around with the camera like an owl in a tree. Lizzy was the one not smiling big enough this time. Dad makes us laugh. But shes been to cool to laugh now-a-days. Abigail and Zack still laugh when I put mudd cookies on Mom's bed and bring frogs to live in my room. Its to dark to look outside anyways. Just to see the trees. Sleeping is boring anyways. Dads stories are the best. Like the ones about the stuffed man he dragged across the road to scare drivers or the one about jumping off the roof into their pool in the summertime.

Name Vignette

My name means pleasant like some kind of blue. The number 5 - and winter. My mother chose the name first for my eldest sister, Elizabeth. But grandma Athena had her hand in that pot.

No grandchild of mine will have that name- she said.

So the first child was Eizabeth and the next Zack. And the next Abigail, another biblical name.

Once she had me, Athena was overwhelmed.

Shouldn't have raised you Cathloic- She would say under her breath as she hastily put her rosary back into her apron picket. Like the sight of Mother Mary would make another baby grow.

So my mother named me Naomi, pleasant calm. And average day. Average temperature. Average sky. Average life.

But to me, my name feels like it is unable to age. like it is supposed to be used by some heroine who dies young and is never able to have her years on this earth written on her face.

Dreaming Of Hair
by Li-Young Lee

Ivy ties the cellar door
in autumn, in summer morning glory
wraps the ribs of a mouse.
Love binds me to the one
whose hair I've found in my mouth,
whose sleeping head I kiss,
wondering is it death?
beauty? this dark
star spreading in every direction from the crown of her head.

My love's hair is autumn hair, there
the sun ripens.
My fingers harvest the dark
vegtable of her body.
In the morning I remove it
from my tongue and
sleep again.

Hair spills
through my dream, sprouts
from my stomach, thickens my heart,
and tangles from the brain. Hair ties the tongue dumb.
Hair ascends the tree
of my childhood--the willow
I climbed
one bare foot and hand at a time,
feeling the knuckles of the gnarled tree, hearing
my father plead from his window, _Don't fall!_

In my dream I fly
past summers and moths,
to the thistle
caught in my mother's hair, the purple one
I touched and bled for,
to myself at three, sleeping
beside her, waking with her hair in my mouth.

Along a slippery twine of her black hair
my mother ties ko-tze knots for me:
fish and lion heads, chrysanthemum buds, the heads
of Chinamen, black-haired and frowning.

Li-En, my brother, frowns when he sleeps.
I push back his hair, stroke his brow.
His hairline is our father's, three peaks pointing down.

What sprouts from the body
and touches the body?
What filters sunlight
and drinks moonlight?
Where have I misplaced my heart?
What stops wheels and great machines?
What tangles in the bough
and snaps the loom?

Out of the grave
my father's hair
bursts. A strand
pierces my left sole, shoots
up bone, past ribs,
to the broken heart it stiches,
then down,
swirling in the stomach, in the groin, and down,
through the right foot.

What binds me to this earth?
What remembers the dead
and grows towards them?

I'm tired of thinking.
I long to taste the world with a kiss.
I long to fly into hair with kisses and weeping,
remembering an afternoon
when, kissing my sleeping father, I saw for the first time
behind the thick swirl of his black hair,
the mole of wisdom,
a lone planet spinning slowly.

Sometimes my love is melancholy
and I hold her head in my hands.
Sometimes I recall our hair grows after death.
Then, I must grab handfuls
of her hair, and, I tell you, there
are apples, walnuts, ships sailing, ships docking, and men
taking off their boots, their hearts breaking,
not knowing
which they love more, the water, or
their women's hair, sprouting from the head, rushing toward the feet.

Reality

Lies bind this house

In morning, at night lust

Envelops these cold sheets.

Need ensnares her to him

Whose steps echo on tile not swept,

Whose hands caress

Contemplating reality?

Fantasy? This freckled

Skin covering his bones and beautiful entirety.

Her monsters skin is morning skit, there

The wounds fester

Her mouth heals the ragged

Massacre of his chest.

In the night he leaves her

And her house to

Live again.

Skin slinks into her thoughts, spreading

To her hands, covering fingers,

And stretches from her wrist, skin encases her mind.

Skin attacks the earth

Of her world- the plants

She grew

One green stalk and stem at a time

Feeling the flesh of the earth, listening

For a whisper from its mouth, help us!

In her days she floats

Past people and places

To the house

Captured in life’s brutal skin, the small ones

She aches and whishes for,

To her self at twenty, walking

Near them, keeping their skin under her nails

Along a new stretch of pale skin

The birds make nests for her:

Small and large. Oval pods. Full of

Fur and wool, soft and inviting.

The fox, her sister, chatters when she gathers

She brushes her skin, over the fur

Her skin is like the birds, there for a purpose

What covers the muscle

And shelters the heart

What glows at night

And darkens in the sun?

Where did she leave her mind?

What breaks and tears the earth?

What collects men

And kills their faith?

Our of the sky

The birds skin

Escapes. A feather

Lands on her hand, filters

Down stomach, past heart,

To severed wings it heals,

Then up,

Encircling shoulders, and heard, and up

Past her ear.

What lets her disappear?

What sets flight

To her thoughts and theory’s?

She is annoyed of dreaming.

She envies the people laughing.

She envies the skin of golden tones,

Needing a utopia

Where, laughing with a different one, she realized

Under his imperfect skin

A seed of wholeness

Was growing quickly

Sometimes her life is wrong

And she fumbles with the words.

Sometimes she realizes she is alone.

Then, she must feel

In another’s skin, she believes

Are wonders, miracles, laughter, sunlight, and him

Coming through the door, his world closing.

Not comprehending

Which he wants more, the world, or

Her skin, as it shifts over muscle and encompasses his body

Voice

Destruction

Electricity raced along his skin
Little bolts escaped and struck
Those who were too near
His eyes were pupils
As he gazed over them
They were sheep
And useless now
Feeling his wrath
Circulating just below the surface
Searching for a crevice
A weakness
To escape
Smiling as they cowered
He drew back the floodgates
And looked to the sky
As the screams started

Voice

Early In The Morning
By Li-Young Lee
While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

I chose this poem because I believe it has a simple beauty to it. A kindof average loveliness that people take for granted most of the time. I feel that the voice in this poem is remembrance, love, and a secret glee at having the knowledge not many people have over a subject. Remembrance because of when Lee starts off the beginning of the poem describing how he would have breakfast, 'While the long grain is softening/in the water, gurgling/over a low stove flame, before/the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced/for breakfast'. Love when he describes his father waiting to hear the music of comb against hair. Secret glee when he ends the poem saying the true reason why his father loves his mothers hair.

The Beautiful Manifestation

The Lagoon

Saturated in water
Dive deeper, imersed
No one around
Just silence
Begotten no where else
Blessed simplicity
I am the water god
In my ocean of chlorine
I am a crocodile
Adapted to chemicals
As my clawed feet
Slovenly push me along the lagoon
Of concrete steps
As green water licks
At blue porcelain
None would enter
Not even you
So put it from your mind
And leve it floopping
On cold tile
Go back to your dry world
And leave me here
Entranced by sunlight

1. The voice that i believe is apparent in my poem when i speak is my need for solitude away from humanity and the ongoings of normal life
2. I will try to be comanding, like I am God and they should be honored to be in my presence, because I think that, that is what my poem is about, being your own God.
3. Well I will be having an awkward silence, many arm movements and kind of swim around, you will understand when you see it!
4. The whole thing frightens me but it is kindof exciting to be performing because you get to become your own person.
5. It adds visuals to it which lets people make easy conections to what the writer is really saying.