Must Humorous: We eat together By Li- Young Lee.

In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.
We shall eat it with rice for lunch,
brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
weeks ago. Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older then him,
without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

How it made me feel: Hungry

Why I choose it: I choose it cause it made me hungry and I want to eat now, however it goes to great length to show that he will share his food and remember eating with his parents. He describes the fact he is eating trout with ginger (Zach haha xD), two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil. This made me drool cause it sounds really good when it is a cold winter day and you just want to eat until you get fat which I want to do. It makes me giggle a little when he says he is lonely but he has his family there ironic I guess but it made me smile.

Favorite line: In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger

Most shocking: Sleepers III by Miles Waggener

On pitched roofs, winter's weight between bricks, sunset leaves gilded
wisps, half the sky a storm, the week's only light--- it seems so

late and halved in the day the visible holds weather that
might only happen to others, never here above yards,

frozen distances unraveling at the skirts of trees
we know are hiding rooms, what some

keeper left, never us we think, a
wind's note working thin

walls, many reed
instruments---

cells where
once bees

were
kept.

How I felt: Sad

Why I choose it: I choose this because

Favorite line: cells where
once bees

My poems: How I truly feel for you my love.

Never be the Same:  I can see, I can still find
You're the only voice my heart can recognize

I'll never be the same
I'm caught inside the memories, the promises
are yesterdays and I belong to you.
I just can't walk away
'cause after loving you
I can never be the same.

I know I'll never forget
the way I always felt with you beside me
and how you loved me then, yeah.


No, stay!
Nothing compares to you.




Take it All away please I beg:


I'm breaking; I can't do this on my own 
Can you hear me screaming out, am I all alone? 

Circling the pain inside my soul 
I reached inside your silence to steal what you won't show 
I tried to find the answers in my fears 
But what was found is lost again as soon as it appeared 






Confession:

I confess I'm always afraid always ashamed 
Of what's inside me 
I confess I'm always afraid always ashamed 

Of what's inside my head 

And I can't breath 
And I still feel 
But not the way I want to 
I'm on the edge I don't' know how 
I can escape this nightmare 

It's always overflowing 
It's a constant fight 
Deep inside 
And I wanna forget it 

Most Wise: I ask my mother to sing Li young lee.

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls
if my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boot.

I've never been in peaking, or the summer palace
nor stood on the great stone boat to watch
the rain begin on the Kuen Ming lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass

But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water
the rock back, and fill with more

Both women have begun to cry
But neither stops her song.

Why I choose it: I choose it cause it shows how much he missed, how much his family loves and or how much his family shows its traditions. He describes so much in this poem its really intriguing to me, it shows how much he missed how he could never really see the summer palace or how much he really missed when his family sung, that sad song they hold so close. This poem shows how strong his family is when his mom and his grandma being to cry but they hold together to finish the song, that shows true love and meaning to their family.

How I felt: I felt sad.

Favorite line: Mother and daughter sing like young girls
if my father were alive

Most Relate able; Family Reunion By Miles Waggener

Farther we go the more
we bury them
and misunderstand each

other sitting with our
cups on the brink of another
commemoration-- the meat

gets smaller on the grill
smaller still the tree
winds eat when they

pick up on this stretch
of lawn where we've
been remembering

in loud voices how
we will make changes
soon the sea far beyond

the mountain haze-hidden
lost thought sleepers
somewhat owl song

how we would like
to find whomever--our
selves someday a place

in it and know
be sure of what
we wanted heard.

How it made me feel: Like its a family reunion

Why I choose it: I choose this because it describes a typical 1950 to a 1960 get together in a park with family, the old grill being sat down with a T- bone on it just relaxing and seeing your kids running around smiling and enjoying themselves, you don't see that quite often. anymore, sad that our society would rather stay in doors and do nothing, compared to going outside running around getting exercise and enjoying the way life is, not wasting it on video games and homework.

Favorite line: the meat gets smaller on the grill.

Personal Favorite: Early in the Morning; Li Young Lee.

 
While the long grain is softening

in the water, gurgling

over a low stove flame, before

the salted winter vegetable 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 kept.

But i know

it is because of the way

my mother's hair falls

when he pulls the pins out

Easily, like curtains

when they untie them in the evening.

How this made me feel: Made me feel like I know how my parents feel.

Favorite line: My mother glides an ivory comb through her hair, heavy and black as calligrapher's ink.

Why I choose it: I choose it cause it made me think of my mom and dad, how they act when they are with each other, they love each other with all their hearts and when my mom does something like this my dad notices and is like Damn, she is beautiful, he always notices what she does, notices how good of a wife she is, how much time she puts into the family, how much time she puts into doing what she does, how much she loves everyone in this family.

Most Creative: The Weight of Sweetness by Li Young Lee

No easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness

song, wisdom, sadness, joy and sweetness
equals three of any of these gravities.

See a peach bond
the branch and strain the stem until
it snaps.
Hold the peach, try the weight, sweetness
and death so round and snug
In your palm
and so, there is
The weight of memory:

Windblown, a rail- soaked
bough shakes, showering
the man and the boy
they shiver in delight
and the father lifts from his son's cheek
one green leaf
fallen like a kiss

The good boy hugs a bag of peaches
his father has entrusted
to him
Now he follows
his father, who came a bagful in each arm
see the look on the boy's face
as his father moves
faster and father ahead, while his own steps
flag, and his arms grow weak, as he labors
under the weight
of peaches.

Favorite Line: One Green leaf, fallen like a kiss.
Why I choose it: I choose it because it is like the universe is in the peach itself, life, death, labor and love. Li young lee shows that the father loves his son and entrusts him with something so precious in his life, it shows that its not such an easy thing to bear, the weight of  something so amazing and so close, so much can be expected of you from doing something so little and seems meaningless but in reality it could be someones everything.
How it made me feel: Made me feel like peaches are the center of his life and so close to us as humans.

Most Honest: Wake by Stephen Dobyns


Waking, I look at you sleeping beside me.
It is early and the baby in her crib
has begun her conversation with the gods
that direct her, cooing and making small hoots.
Watching you, I see how your face bears the signs
of our time together—for each objective
description, there is the romantic; for each
scientific fact, there's the subjective truth—
this line was caused by days at a microscope,
this from when you thought I no longer loved you.
Last night a friend called to say that he intends
to move out; so simple, he and his wife splitting
like a cell into two separate creatures.
What would happen if we divided ourselves?
As two colors blend on a white pad, so we
have become a third color; or better,
as a wire bites into the tree it surrounds,
so we have grown together. Can you believe
how frightening I find this, to know I have
no life except with you? It's almost enough
to make me destroy it just to protest it.
Always we seemed perched on the brink of chaos.
But today there's just sunlight and the baby's
chatter, her wonder at the way light dances
on the wall. How lucky to be ignorant,
to greet joy without a trace of suspicion,
to take that first step without worrying what
comes trailing after, as night trails after day,
or winter summer, or confusion where all
seemed clear and each moment was its own reward.

How it made me feel: Made me feel like i'm in Awe.

Favorite line: Can you believe
how frightening I find this, to know I have
no life except with you?

Why I choose it: I choose it because many people go through break ups, go through relationships but once it gets to marriage its very serious, some people can't live without the significant other, some of these lines show how much he loves the other, such as  him seeing no life without her, no life without being in love and being with the woman he married. Every moment has its own little reward and its proven because, you can embrace it with love or with hate, either way you are given something new and exciting as a choice to be with the moment given.

Most Emotive: “Bleeder” by Stephen Dobyns

By now I bet he’s dead which suits me fine,
but twenty-five years ago when we were both fifteen
and he was a camper and I a counselor
in a straight-laced Pennsylvania summer camp
for crippled and retarded kids, I’d watch

him sit all day by himself on a hill.
No trees, or sharp stones: he wasn’t safe to be around.
The slightest bruise and all his blood would simply drain away
It drove us crazy – first to protect him, then to see it happen

I would hang around him, picturing a knife or pointed stick
wondering how a small cut you’d have to make, then see the expectant face
of another boy watching me, and we each knew, how the other would like to see him bleed.

He made us want to hurt him so bad so much we hurt ourselves instead:
sliced fingers in craft class, busted noses in baseball, then joined at last mass wrestling matches beneath his hill, a tangle of crutches and braces, hammering at

each other to keep from harming him. I’d look up from slamming a kid in the gut and see him watching
with the empty blue eyes of children in sentimental paintings, and hope to see him frown or grin.
But there was nothing: as if he had already died.

Then after a week, they sent him home. Too much responsibility, the director said.
Hell, I bet the kid had skin like leather.
Even so, I’d lie in bed at night and think
of busting into his room with a sharp stick, lash

and break the space around his rose petal flesh,
while campers in bunks around me tossed and dreamt with this his pleasure: To make us cringe beneath

our wish to do damage? But then who cared?
We were living children, he the ghost
and what he gave us was the pleasure of being bad together.
He took us from our private spite and offered our bullying a common cause:

which is why we missed him, even though we wished him harm. When he went, we lost ours hared meanness and each of us was left to snarl his way to a separate future, eager to discover some new loser to link us in frailty again.

I choose this poem because it shows a lot of anger, shared feelings with all the campers at this one camp, the desire to hurt this one person, to make him bleed and see the blood come out of him. The feelings that come out of this poem are literally, hunger for blood, hunger for pain and hunger for satisfaction. Restricting emotions in this poem are the fact he wants to protect this camper, to make sure he has a good experience at camp instead of him dying. Another reason why I choose this poem is because of the conflicts that he experiences, personal conflicts, man vs world conflicts, and man vs nature conflicts.

Favorite Line: The slightest bruise and all his blood would simply drain away

It drove us crazy – first to protect him, then to see it happen