On her hands and knees she works, all day, to fix
.....the pipes under the sink, so that the spigot will stop leaking.
All night the water drips, plink plink plink, in the sink,
.....like pennies being thrown into a wishing pond.
Her list of chores grows with each plink, another night
.....of work overflowing past her control.
"Helena!" her mother yells. She gives her orders in Ukranian, a language
....unfamiliar to Lana, yet she rises from her burrow under the sink.
Her mother wants something, she always wants something, Lana
....guesses that a cold pop from the icebox will silence her for now.
She returns to her burrow to find her baby brothers splashing around
....and making a mess; two puppies that have never seen water before.
Plink plink plink. Water drips from the leaky spigot
....on and on throughout the night.
Lana lies awake, staring at the paint flakes that decorate
....the ceiling. A strip of sunlight shines across the floor.
She sighs, ... and gets out of her makeshift bed. .. It starts all over again.
I was proud of myself for using ‘spigot’ in a poem. I originally wrote this one about my Grandma and what she’s told me of her childhood so I think that helped me to have concrete ideas about what I was writing about. This one was a little harder to revise because I felt like I kept repeating myself and it was hard to come up with the third line of the first stanza. Also, I don’t really like the image of the boys and the puppies, but I couldn’t think of anything else that would fit right. Maybe this summer when I’m lifeguarding I’ll see some kids playing in the pool and come up with a new analogy.
ReplyDeleteI really like the ending of the poem because I think that a lot of people can relate to that feeling. I also found it cool that I wrote that line, including all the spacing, without thinking…I just kind of wrote it. I like when that happens because I think I write better in those situations than when I have to think about it too much (which is why I had trouble coming up with a new title for “Eight Inches of Rain and Counting”).