Some Poetry from My Torrey Project...

From my Amy Tan unit:

*
Of Amy Tan and the Number Four

I wanted a nice and even number,
And I got four.
And what I got, I used,
And it was evidently
What they read.
Death and squares and mahjongg,
The winds, and two times two.
I guess readers can learn something.
Or anything.

*
Asian after All

I was asked,
“Do you play the violin?”
“Eat rice every day?”
And I had to answer,
“No, I’ve never played anything
But the recorder,
And I eat pizza
More often than rice.
But my sister plays the violin,
And the rice cooker in our apartment
Does get used quite often.”
So I guess you could
Sort of call me Asian after all.

*
Inspiration

If I had to choose a muse,
Perhaps I’d name
Tomomi, as I called her,
Or Meg, which she was also,
Or Margaret Anne,
Which was stated clearly
On her birth certificate.
If goddesses had different names
In different cultures,
What is she to me?

**
From my Madeleine L'Engle unit:

*
Wrinkling

The wind blows
Outside and passes by
The clean, white
Sheet hanging from
The line. Rippling
And turning, the
Fabric wrinkles,
Yet stretches out,
As the ocean’s
Waves flatten.
Taken down from
The line, we make
The bed with a
Clean, white,
Unwrinkled sheet.

*
What Time Is It?

Yesterday, it was the twenty-ninth,
And tomorrow will be the start
Of a new month, May to be exact.
My twenty-first birthday
Is a few short weeks away,
And the Olympics are this year,
This summer, 8/8/08, at 8:08.

While at the same time,
Yesterday I started over,
And tomorrow I will finish.
In a few weeks, I will feel
Like I am back in, or out,
Of high school,
And later this summer, maybe
I’ll choose to be nine again
And pretend to be in Georgia.