Vicky Where I'm From

Lyana's Where I'm From

Regina's "Where I'm From Poem"

Cristalee "Where I'm From"

Ms. Noll's Where I'm From Poem

The following is a poem that I wrote, which was inspired by George Ella Lyon's poem. It was published last year in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal.

On Being Half
by Lori Noll

My Lola told my mom, when you’re pregnant eating octopus dyes the womb, turns your baby black. You want that?

But the cravings gripped her in an inky fist. Cross-legged black teeth sucking tentacles after dark.

By day she ate white things invoking white skin. Jasmine rice, angel food cake, wonder bread.

And so I’m half. Toasted almond skin and half-way slanted eyes.

I am the image of the colonizer and the colonized, crying silently because my mom burned candles every day she carried me.

I am from these folktales, a magic history.

And from Marcos and Magellen, from adobo and itlog, a free market and homeland security.

From the leather loin cloth of Lapu Lapu, the Filipino American War, a million dead. My body is the battleground. Flesh and blood born of bloodshed.

I am the colonizer. I am the colonized. I am the lustful look in the soldier’s eyes.

Both the liberation and the enslavement of the mail order bride.

I am half. Toasted almond skin and half-way slanted eyes.

I am the colonizer. I am the colonized.

Love struggling muffling the pain and truth of history.

I am the victory.

Akena's Where I'm From

Gregory's Where I'm From Poem

Where I’m From…..

I am from the scent of marijuana
Diapers in the street
I am from Shaquaya, Tatiana, Pookie, and Balla
From, “Two shakes of a lamb’s tail”
And water fights that flooded the rooms and our hearts with joy
I am from guns cocked and loaded, singeing through the weakening fabric of society
From old excrement smeared on the walls
And the smell of urine along the halls
I am from the Thunder Cats, Pokemon, Acme Hour, and Captain Planet
From Looney Tunes, Flinstones, Sesame Street, and Barney,
The Voltron action figure that protected me from the outside world
I am from saggy, wet pampers, wobbling down the hall with my bottle
I am from barbecues in the park
I am from neighborhoods where people kill kids for giving them a look
Inspired from a line they heard in one of Fifty-Cent’s hooks
From schools where students choose PSP’s and TV’s over books
I am from screams and cries of police and ambulance sirens screeching all night
I am from a fantasy land I’ll never get to see
Because I never unlocked the gifts and blessings that were stored inside of me
I am from lyrical kings and queens

From a woman with thirteen kids
Which leaves people perplexed because we never seem to have the means
We’ve come from Staten Island, New York where we’ve faced many tests
And we made it through every one
Each one of us is blessed

Joann's Where I'm From Poem

"Where We're From" Poems

This week we're writing poems about where we're from, modeled after George Ella Lyon's poem:

Where I’m From
by George Ella Lyon

I am from clothespins,from Clorox and carbon tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush,
the Dutch elm
whose long gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons,
from perk up and pipe down.
I’m from He restoreth my soul with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch, fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.

I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded–
leaf-fall from the family tree

We read the poem together, and then talked about the images and sensory details in it. Then we made sixteen lists of things in our neighborhoods, in our houses, childhood objects etc. And finally we took those items and applied our literary elements (which we learned last semester) to them...metaphor, simile, imagery, onomatopoeia, and more...and wrote our own poems. We recorded and edited using imovie. Enjoy!