me

dear you,


when i was young i didn’t know the difference between a sparrow and a hawk, i didn’t
imagine fairies dancing between blades of grass on my lawn. even though i grew up in a
town of train tracks and wheat fields i did not discover imagination. it was a place where
there was room to run. i ran figuratively and literally, away from emotion from
reality. i ran not to get somewhere but as a routine, it made me feel as if i was running away from the static lines of high-school. my mother always encouraged my physical activity. to her being the cross country champion and soft ball star were the most prosperous ways of living.

my mother, during my youth, was a symbol of perfection, a steel shining women. she
was intelligent, respectable, the type of women no one would play a prank on. she was tall, flat chested, with stern shoulders. but her hair looked too soft against her angular cheek bones, it looked like the only thing you could touch on her body that would feel anything like a mother. oh, and her eyes, that’s what made her beautiful. they were the only hint of emotion, of weakness, surprisingly deep, they seemed as if they were always searching for more light, for truth.


i remember being a child and telling my mother that i wanted a barbie for my birthday. oh, how i yearned for those plastic L.A. curves and for the adventures we would go on. but my mothers answer was  “well dear, that won’t help you grow up big and strong.”twenty years later i realize that nether did lies. from then on i never asked for anything but bikes or new soft ball mitts. i think that i can still hear barbie crying in the background of bats splitting.


being a sports star and naturally intelligent in high-school automatically made me a
more popular girl. but i never had a friend true enough to tell them how unhappy i
was about life. i felt as though my mental condition didn’t matter but rather my performance, and i performed well. i flirted with boys until i manipulated them into believing that love is a pattern of break-ups and hook-ups. i didn’t grow up in a household of love; my mother wasn’t married and never had a relationship. she had odd ways of showing me her love, but i’m not saying she didn’t care for me, just not in the typical motherly way. she wasn’t a friend either, she was an authority figure, almost a god. for example she insisted that i go to the college near home that offered me a full ride soft ball scholarship even though i secretly wanted to go to a liberal art school in new york. it wasn’t until i met len that i understood a different dimension of life.

so, here my story begins (not at the beginning of this letter, oddly enough). it was right before high-school graduation, the may flowers were making their voyage across the prairie horizons and i had just got done running. my legs were burning coals of physical pumping, and ready for more or for a chair. the mailbox was waving its little red flag and i grabbed the mail without thought. i sat in my favorite chair, one my mother thought too soft, and sifted through the mail...sports magazines, college advertisments, and then a thin white envelope addressed in my name. i had never written a letter or received one, so i was immediately curious. i walked into the house and shlumped into my chair, mother was in the kitchen being undomestic, “kele how was the run?”  “mmmhum?” i was just staring at my name on the envelope. mother pushed through the swinging kitchen door and rolled her eyes at my shoes jumbled by the front door, “you know how you treat your possessions is a sign of how you treat yourself.” “mmmmhum.” my eyes fixed on the strange handwriting--it was sloppy. “what do you have there?” “nothing....” i got up slowly, mail falling from my lap in a mess of flop flop flops. she was rearranging my shoes and didn’t notice me quietly slip up the stairs with the thin envelope in my hands. what was inside? a letter, well, more like a note...

kele,
my name is len...god i have written so many things and yet, i think this is the hardest. did you know that your name means sparrow-hawk in hopi? that’s why i named you that. i’ve seen many sparrows lately they dart and stab at the sky as if they know....i’ve been thinking of you. now that you’re older i would like to met you. i will be in your area on the 21st of this month, meet me at the coffee shop? if not don’t worry.
hope to see you soon,
your father

my eyes darted and stabbed the thin notebook page as if birds had flown from the letter into me, making me flutter inside. oh, those words: your father....they haunted me.
i had never heard of a sparrow-hawk and since this man, len, my father had left no last name i had no way to google him. i didn’t want to walk down those stairs into my mothers lair, what would i ask? so i kept it a secret. i looked up a sparrow-hawk, it didn’t look very special to me, a common hawk. with nothing else to look up i searched the name len. it means flute in hopi, which i found a little odd. a flute? i had never imagined a man playing the flute or really thought of the meaning of names before.

i had completely ignored the idea of having a father, in fact, i had never met my mothers father either. she never talked about her past and i never asked. it seemed natural not to ask her for help or knowledge. i suddenly had all sorts of doubts about meeting him. how could he just decide to walk into my life now? if my mother had never mentioned him he must not be that great of a man. i felt as though he was going to complicate my simple straight line of a life. and in some way, that is exactly what my soul was yearning for, a change that could satisfy me and maybe make me happier.

the twenty-first seemed to take forever to arrive, but as the days rotated into their usual routine i became the hamster in the wheel again. then suddenly, the twenty-first was like a spoke in that fast spinning wheel. i remember walking to the coffee shop in a lull, my heartbeat didn’t feel like my own, as if a stranger’s heart was now pounding questions against my lungs. i walked inside the coffee shop, bells announcing my arrival and a theater girl from my class stared at me from behind the counter of teas and overly priced desserts. her eyebrows raised as i took a set near the window facing the road. i hadn’t thought about other people observing my fathers’ and my first meeting, what if she told someone who would eventually tell my mother? what was i doing here anyway? then the entire environment of chocolate covered coffee beans and critical stares were steamed away. i knew it was him because i didn’t recognize him. he walked to the counter his back facing me, i could see his hands gesturing to the blackboard menu and he made the theater girl laugh. as he spoke i noticed his backpack slung across one shoulder and a thin black instrument case. he turned and saw me staring, i could feel myself blushing, like a slow wave of realization displayed on my cheeks. he smiled and walked long and lean, rocking to his tippy toes with every step.

he was wearing a paint freckled grand canyon shirt and abused shorts. his forehead was high because of his receding hair line, he had boarders under his eyes but not as if he lacked sleep and huge ears that he was still growing into. i tried to say hello but the my vocal chords would not be plucked, he smiled at me with his thin lips, “hello kele. i’m, uhhh, i’m len, uhhh i mean....”  i grinned at his nerves “your my father.” he seemed relieved, “yes, i’m your father.” i was eager to speak, to tell him about myself, what my wind was...but as i opened my mouth i realized i didn’t have anything to say. how could i introduce myself to him? “i am a woman, an athlete, a lost soul like everyone else” i imagined saying. but instead i was silent and stared at the speckled counter top and tried to breath. “so, is this strange? should i leave?” he asked with a hurricane of emotions expanding from his raised eyebrows and worried lips. “it’s okay, stay.” i whispered, then, just to blow away the dust i asked “what’s in the box?”

he opened the case and pulled out the disjointed pieces of a flute. “do you play an instrument?” he asked as he assembled the silver lining of our conversation. “i don’t. i’ve never learned any instrument actually.” i thought of the band geeks that i never ridiculed but never spoke to either, i imagined my father being made fun of for being a flautist. “well kele, that’s too bad! did you not have time or do you not take an interest in music?” the flute was a horizon of reflection “well, i guess i’ve never really had the time being busy with soft ball and track and school.”  he said the typical response of “well, you can’t do everything now can ya.” that first meeting only lasted about forty minuets, he played on his flute making the air waver with a wind of song. i remember walking home from the meeting and noticing for the first time how the cicadas buzzing harmonized with lawn mowers and how the sun shown as if laying a protective hand over each of my steps. i realized that walking is much different than running, you absorb more when taking the slow way home.

we always met at the coffee shop, no one there cared if we laughed louder than the blender or if len pulled out his flute to show me how love can make music. after about three meetings i finally brought up my mother. “you know, i’ve been keeping our meetings a secret from my mother.” i felt relieved to finally have said it, “and why’s that?” he asked, “well i guess i don’t know. i didn’t want to upset her or something...i mean, i don’t know anything about her and your relationship. you know she’s never been in a relationship while raising me, i’ve never really had a father figure to look up to.”  he didn’t seem surprised by this. “you know kele, i loved your mother and i would of loved to watch you grow up.” his eyes shifted, as oceanic plates split so water filled in. i hesitated in wonder of his sadness “why didn’t you stay?” i thought of how different my life would be if he had been there from the start. maybe i would have learned how to play the guitar or cello, maybe i could have studied the sky or planted a tree. but at the same time his absence didn’t really bother me, i felt like he had a good reason for being the late bird. “your mother was afraid of commitment more than your average teenage boy. but i loved her for her boldness, she never listened to anyone, she had her own path going.” he clenched his coffee cup as if it were a helping ceramic hand, “kele, she left me after telling me that she was pregnant. she told me not to pursue her that she didn’t need another dead beat man in her life.” he paused “i haven’t spoken to her since, and i know it wouldn’t be a good idea to.” he let go of the coffee cup lightly and reached for my hand, “there’s a picture of your mother and i in an album she once had, though maybe she got rid of it.” he paused a ocean expanding from his eyes to mine, “is she happy?” i knew the answer but i couldn’t say it out loud, instead i floundered until  i found these words on the tide of my lips, “is anyone?”

it was a day full of light, the prairie grasses stretching toward the horizon in an endless yoga lesson from the wind. my father opened that visit with a writing exercise, “write for five minutes without stopping”. i wrote about the movement of wings and how i wish i had the wingspan to reach all of the world’s horizons. i loved the silence our pencils created between us, just the scribbling sound of a muse dancing into being. he wrote about prairie fires and renewal. we exchanged our five minute pieces and spoke about suicide about how scared i was to die and how he never would have the courage to do it. after that day i never saw len again.

he never wrote or came back to the coffee shop. that summer i sat there at the booth by the road, searching still to be satisfied with life. i hunted for the picture he had spoken of, but it had disappeared. after years of feeling once again abandoned i finally asked me mother about him.

“mother, what if one day i get married. who will walk me down the aisle?” i asked her, even though my real concern was len, the flautist who inspired me to study writing and to observe life as it came. “you know dear, i’ve never gotten married, but if i had i wouldn’t have had my father walk me down the aisle. i probably would have been able to walk a few more steps by myself.” she wasn’t looking at me but the sterile white walls of her living room “but what if my father turns out to be someone you didn’t expect? a man worth having in life?” i wanted her to admit it, i stared at her soft hair and waiting eyes. “baby, he wasn’t. he didn’t even have the courage to live, let alone take care of anyone.”  she got up and moved to look outside the picture window “len was his name. he killed himself before i could even tell him i was pregnant with you.” at this she turned with tears on her cheeks, “i felt like i failed everything. kele, dear, you don’t need a man to walk you down the isle, you don’t need anything but yourself, be a strong girl.” it was like being peeled back into nothing, my mother’s words a black whole the creator of my sudden confusion.
i have never told anyone about my meetings with len except you. it’s a secret, that man, whoever he was, was the key to a different path. he led me with the memory of our few words he led me to sparrow-hawks and imagination.


today i watched my children playing among fairies in the lawn, they laugh, wonder, observe, create. a man i never knew became a pillar of today. you can change someone's life. but be careful who you write a letter to.

with peace and joy,
kele the sparrow-hawk




- - -


dear lee,

hey! i thought of you today while staring at an orange on my desk. i remember being so excited to reach my mailbox after school, your letters where like fruit to a fruit fly, heavenly and sweet. on any account i miss your words. how’s college going? i hope you are well, it’s been years!



remember me?
ari

- - -

ari! i’m so glad you wrote, i can still smell the fruit on my hands from reading your letter. it’s nice to have something in the mail other than bills and basketball magazines...oh but there is national geographic! jesus i wish i could take pictures good enough to be in there! school is going really well, i still don’t have a set major (go figure) but i have been interested in history more than ever.

did you know you can touch the stars on top of the great wall of china, i swear, it’s true.
at least if you have an imagination like ours
speaking of which, how’s your writing going?
and i know this is just damn awful but i forgot how old you are.

remember me,
lee

- -

dear lee,

national geographic is one of my favorites! in fact i told my mom straight up that a subscription would be an amazing christmas gift! and yeah, i wish my photography was better too. history is very interesting, i’m taking a world history class this semester, lots of reading, but surly riveting!

did you go to china? you should have grabbed a star and sent it to me.
but i bet it would have burned up the envelope....poor mailman

writing is going alright. i only get a poem out about once a week, which is pretty slow production i know. and for my creative writing class we have to write a short story, which is going to be a challenge!!!

i’m turning 19 in a couple of months. you?
what’s the weather like down there?
well, it’s a gorgeous day on the prairie here!

hope all is well,
ari

- - -
    I never imagined picking a columbine and never thinking of you, delicate open petals, like your legs wrapped among the windy laughter. It cripples me as I pass the gardens of my campus, knowing you never got a fragment of a diploma. But as I watch the robins peck at the empty roads I understand you are not in a furnace of hell, but a ghost who trails me, how those ghostly white blooms follow me.

- - -
Stepping past the broken glass
and all the dandelions
with no wishes left.
I see the moon
who reminds
that change comes fast
change comes slow.
- - -
this town doesn’t have much of a skyline
but it sure as hell has a view.
see the horizon blow the pines.

my eyes sift across the blue
of the earth. and I know
sometimes my eyes imbue

just how beautiful this plateau
truly is. as the world gently spins
and sets the sky aglow.

- - -



the result of a snow day

my teacher went crazy today
around two fifteen
she pulled each tissue
from the tissue box
and threw them on my desk
I imagine mother nature
is like my teacher today,
throwing all that white stuff
onto the pallet
of our learning planet.
- - -



I’m like the hallows
of a guitar
empty
until your fingers
strum music
into my womb

Quiet
kiss
riot
abyss
trees
June
peas
prune crystal
bar
pistol
guitar
brooded
concluded

we wandered inside a quiet
kiss,
delving in a romantic riot.
thoughts of love arise from abyss
of the past, of dying trees
and grave stones in June.









I love it
when the winds blow
making the whole world
shake. I love it
when your lips
write poems
all across my neck.

You hold me
like the wind
holds fate,
blowing us to sleep
inside the moon’s heart.


i remember last october
when you held me close
as if i too
would be taken by the wind.

- - -

I’m the perfect one for a secret hand shake
I know all the rules that we should make:
no kissing with lies on your tongue
no more acting like your young
cuz we’ll play beneath the sheets
it’s a game that we can’t beat.

Understand the sun is in your eyes
it makes it that much harder to say goodbye
*but I know that you’ll come back
to find that feelin that you’ll lack.

*but i know that you'll come home
cuz no one's sapoused to be alone.

You knew I was the perfect one
tried to follow rules just for fun
kissed beneath the sheets
it’s a game that we can’t beat.

You knew the words to me
Each curvature of vocal pleas
That forms a smooth statue on the ground
concrete or alabaster sound
Those lyrics embedded into stone.
Oh, your stone heart, stone heart,
Use those words to sing
Me out of dying.

you knew the words to me
every single vocal plea.


- - -
You knew the words to me
Each curvature of the vocal chords
That forms a statue of sound,
Smooth concrete or alabaster.
Those lyrics embedded in stone,
Oh, your stone heart,
Use those words to sing
Me out of sorrow.

- - -



the language of skin
speaks dry stories,
the deffinition of useful art.

- - -


my heart beats
up my soul. the sun darkens
every face, it burns each mind.
all I can see is blind to me.

water me sky
fill me, flood my body
even drown this muse.

- - -


in my lap his head curls
and i smooth the edges of his mohawk
shaven sides
kiss my thighs
and the thick labyrinth consumes

he is a hawk
a head of curls
colored like a peasants flight.

in my lap his head thinks
and from the thoughts come visual climaxes.
my fingertips read his hair
like a poem in brail,
pulling out the code.

the strands from his scalp
become hands, stroking the backside
of my heart. combing through my flaws
and blessing them with soap.

i once saw him as a devil
consuming me whole, leaving me hot
like the depths of a fire.
i am a deviless now
truly swimming in his smoke.

a lovers lamentation
it’s a labyrinth you want to get lost in

Estella

I found her buried in the dust
so I blew a sand storm from my womb
revealing her freckles,
those beautiful constellations.

Caballeria de Berenice,
her hair fell from the night
a waving onyx ocean,
bits of mexican soil swimming
in the roots of her soul.

She would lean into my eyes
searching for a place to keep
all the paper stars she cut.
I became her mother, and she
the never ending opportunity of the sky.


I became her mother, an opening sun rise
and she became my daughter
cutting stars from white paper
In the orphanage we cut white paper
into stars, and we hung them
onto wallpaper horizons.
She leans into my eyes
searching for a place to keep
all her paper stars.

- - - 

some songs sound like summer
memories of us looped in the chorus,
a familiar hand
lyrics we all knew.

we’d pull the cars close
to the lake,
letting the music strip us
the water swimming with naked muses.

you’d enter me as stars enter the sky,
we’d shine brightly, laughing
at the boys dunking the girls.

some nights it was only the girls
and the song about sex would replay
until we were able to laugh
at misfortunes, we’d give advice
we had heard in lyrics.

but when the girls needed
more drama to solve
you’d corner me,
a willing prey
making me jump through
the smoke ring conversations
until I got lost inside your lungs.


metallic, mindless, i search for a field
to learn earth like a butterfly or bee
I yearn for a oak trees rippling shield
to pick fruit, learning love, a weight in me
in society I’m stuck, a window
a glass eye, lacking cornea and art.
I’ve heard of  that never-ending meadow
i hear rebirth, the quickly beating heart.
Truth is a waterfall, drowning all hope
my lungs have collapsed in it’s hurried tears
In attempt to concur without a rope
we are motherless now and it appears
to rest in blissful blowing grass, means death
hopeful ones search for fields release your breath




i wonder of all the places he hasn’t
touched me. and those few places
burn: touch me.

the seasons belonged to us
autumn: he made it feel like sex,
his hands falling into me
like a leaf accidently landing in my eyes.
he melts the snow, with a kiss
and births poppies and tulips
until spring’s song is summer’s.

I do not comprehend sleeping beneath
the shade of anyone else’s oak branches,
those eyelashes fluttering in October winds.

My face is lined with poetry
tears scattering our love on the page
of my cheeks. don’t leave me.

but I hear him, that voice,
resounding from my inner most heart
“don’t worry about it.”


don’t leave me.





I. The dying traveler

My life is not a circus
it’s an endless vaudevillian act.
my spirit moves
floats
  limply
landing in pale hands,
like a scarf tossed into the air.

Ii. Dance

slow-slow-quick-quick
the king of jazz
come dance in flapp-
er upt in













The door is wooden and white
it’s closed to the small town outdoors
and I dare not expose


small town tulips bud
and the sun sings springtime gospels.
I sit inside, with an upset stomach
sighing and wishing for good conversation.

My eyes are sensitive to words
and I water them into green prairies,
but their roots can not grow
without your solid soil stare.

Detached I begin to write,
unsure of seasons ahead.

To my right side there is a door
wooden and white.
It’s center is a clay mother
holding her beloved son.
Their silent slumbering
is shaped like a beating heart,
I take comfort in their sincerity.

To my left side


- - -





keles flight




each time my mother sees something in the sky
that’s fatter than a sparrow
she cries “ah! kele, it’s a bald eagle!”

even if it was a vulture.



and each time my mother anxiously stares at
my belly. I look out the window
searching
frantically
for my own bird.


- - -

My mother adopted me when I was three, it’s always been just us. Since then I’ve had an overwhelming instinctual need to impress her. I owe her so much. She was my whole world and I didn’t mean to disappoint her. I always thought that my mother and I were really alike and now I’m trying to remember if there was a time when we weren’t the same, when we wanted two different things…

…I was turning six and my mother asked me what I wanted for a present…


she was smooth
and smelt like a dollar store
plastic hills erupted on her chest
with an L.A. attitude.

i wanted her.
this materialistic lust.


“a barbie mother, that’s what i want.”


mother was sensible
and smelt like an office
athletic plains expanded on her…everything,
with a Spartan confidence.

i had her.
this mother-child relationship.


“dolls won’t help you grow up big and strong.”

well neither do your lies…




Volley-ball, bike, softball mitt, I’m sure I was fine with whatever she gave me, and I let that childhood fantasy disappear in a cloud of sport dust. But now as I grow older, that baby doll cries in my dreams and my memories. 









- - -

My toes know every cement brick
in this town. Their worn too,
from Mexicos dirt
and the places I need to walk
on barefoot. Sometimes
shoes are cuffs, dead end signs
on a road that really leads to home.

My legs lead you to forever,
thin illusions of dietary know-how,
when really I  eat like your Aunty Janet.
(Please dear, pass the gravy.)

The physical limbs lean against
anything thicker than a wrist,
breathing in and out with the wind.
Trying to match my hands
to the clouds’ steady flow from
country to country.

Some day I’ll find were this body
fits. Were awkward tree bows
blend into the sky behind,
lovers laced in bed.
But for now I am comforted
in short walks to the grocery store,
holding your hand.



Two wooden sticks fastened by glue,
make crosses on my mothers
bed-room wall, telling me how to
fix my arms, droop
hang there
be still in this
fast world.
She laughs though, when my words
come out so true,
when religion becomes just that
to me, a piece of art
among so many other stories.
(The ones they used to tell me
before I closed my eyes.)

- - -
We hadn’t been alone in awhile,
so I took notice to his lips
and every other budding gift
he possessed.
The warmth between us
never burned
only pumped and flowed.


Though when I think of it
I may still have a scar.

- - -
-His childhood, mom died from Consumption (a form of T and then his father stopped caring for him and left him to be adopted by a loving women and her unloving husband,  John Allen. John refused to have Edgar have his name until his wife convinced him to name Edgar, Edgar Allen Poe. Just having their name as an addition.

-Through elementary and high school Edgar dug up graves for money. Which could’ve inspired some of his disturbing poetry.

-We’re not sure when he started writing poetry or when he considered himself a writer, but his first published piece was

-He got married in 1836 to a women named Virginia. They moved to New York City

- - -

i.

The cops flashed their lights,
neon rings
orbiting the night.
I stood alone
in the middle of main street.
It was past mid-night,
the traffic lights
conducted no one,
always saying
“no”
in
red red
red
winds.

As I touched my surroundings,
a collected cry
sounded; leaving me
to wonder
how nature could
ever be in such
deep remorse.
A collected cry
deep from the mouth
of a goddess wind


ii.


My mother didn’t like
swimming pools
so we would dance
in the yard
half nakedness
a color close to the sky,
the sprinklertossing it’s
spity laughter
in handfuls
across our world.

We’d water the tulips
leaving them jealous
of our own
budding mouths.


And we ignored
the need for ignorance,
neon bar signs
telling us
there are better
beverages to swim in.


iii.

I showed her how to dig,
to cover her hands
with knowledge.
Finding night crawlers
in the afternoon
kissing her toes
or discovering
how much you need to pump
with two-year-old legs
to reach
the climax of laughter.

I wouldn’t tell her
of the times
neon shards filled my lungs
and I almost
felt real light

(to be buried
in the same earth
and find
the same worms).


I have planted something
more than mother nature
more than the earth
could ever grow…


iv.


My legs shook,
gleaming realms of power
dirty
burning paper
leaving ashes
for my thoughts.


I want to swallow
neon.


i.


The town blew its history
into my nostrils.
I stood alone
on main street
listening for my breath
to fall
into the wind’s hands
a messenger
for the broken souls
who no longer
can speak.

The cops circle me
yelling
though all I can hear
are the street lights
neon screams
only whisper
red
red red.

ii.


I was the definition of youth
catching butterflies in my
mouth, giggling
until the sky
giggled back.
We ate popcicles
letting the lime green neon
sticks
trickle down our chins.

i. wind, lonely, by yourself
ii. water, community, family, youth
iii. earth, solid, sharing
iv. fire, temptation, hatred

- - -
Sometimes
when I’d pretend that the
senior hall
was a run way,
I’d get the smirks
I was looking for.


The building
was made of bricks
and mouths
and brains.
We were young,
and sometimes
we’d pretend
the senior hall
was a run way
and we’d get the smirks
we were looking for.

Art projects
all most as burnt out
as the teacher,
sat behind the glass case
(like anyone would steal
a clay doggie)
and the newspapers
that the juniors wrote
became
a carpet across the
cafeteria.

My words tumbled
out of two page papers
and chemistry labs
left to be swept
by janitors.

- - -

Suspension










I lay scattered
like a puzzle piece art exhibit,
breathing through his sheets
as he puffed away twilight memories.

Baby couldn’t remember
who I was
and what we were
for that one night
suspended a few feet above ground
and a few below sky;
the place where gravity had no grasp
and air pressure froze. 
Couldn’t remember Sinatra
unfolding my tangled skin,
or Beethoven giving beats
to his fluid dance.

He flew back to his clouds
while I dropped back into swamps,
but I lost a piece of me
suspended in that mist
forever.

- - -
In this town where cigarettes
always burn too quickly
and it blizzards in november
there’s a boy with nutcracker eyes
who told me he has never
written anything beautiful.
But I know that once again he’s
Been lying because when the pear
Curves of a guitar
Are placed into this hands
It’s like he takes the bruised fruit
And plays God, making
Each flaw into smooth skin
And
- - -

He cupped my hip bones into his hands,
cleverly nipping my ears
I move his fingers up my spine
turning my neck to smile at him.
We swayed and grasped
holding onto each other; filling our eyes
with naughty words and teeth incisions.
He gasped at me and it felt good
until the music stopped.

- - -
Abigail Williams was a very interesting woman; well I guess that’s the nice way to say it. In my opinion she was kind of crazy. Her participation in the Salem Witch Trails was crucial, without her there basically wouldn’t have been these trails in the first place. She was a greedy conniving young woman who knew what she wanted and thought she knew how to get it.

Abigail Williams wanted a man of her own and she thought she had found him, John Proctor. John was married to a woman named Elizabeth but when Abigail helped them as a servant in their household he fell in love with Abigail. Abigail took advantage of this love and the two put a black mark in John’s and Elizabeth’s marriage forever. When Elizabeth found out that her husband had been cheating on her with Abigail she kicked Abigail out of their household. Abigail still believed that John was in love with her even though he did not pursue their relationship any further. Even when he told Abigail that he no longer was in love with her she still was determined to have him. Abigail believed that the only way John would be all hers would be if Elizabeth was to die. Abigail planned on this happening very soon.
The things that Abigail was to do next truly proves what a horrible person she was. Her plan was to accuse Elizabeth Proctor of witchery so that the punishment would be death. Therefore she could have John as her own husband. I don’t understand how someone could go through all of this hard work for the love of man. Though I would imagine it would be difficult for your love to be married to someone else.

To me Abigail should’ve been the one to hang. She didn’t think of all of the lives her actions effected, and if she did realize she obviously didn’t care enough to stop for their sakes. Abigail didn’t really have good characteristics; she was simply an evil child who spread her lies like the devil.

- - -


George Moses Horton was born into slavery. He was the property of a farmer named William Horton for most of his life, he as allowed a few things in this life which included selling produce in a town called Chapel Hill. He taught himself to read, and though he could not write he became infatuated with poetry. He would think of verses in his head and keep them there to recite. Once while visiting Chapel Hill some university students who lived there noticed his abnormally big vocabulary. They soon discovered his poetry and began paying him to give them poems that they could give to their sweet hearts. Which if you ask me, was a pretty good idea. Since George couldn’t write he recited the poems to the students who copied them down, they payed him with money and sometimes books.

- - -

She bullied the little cousins
that understood her MaryJane
black flat kicks.
But Charlotte was a doll to me
I would stare into her brown eyes
and tell her, without any words
do not touch my christmas gifts.