THEME FOR ENGLISH B

By Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you---
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me---who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white---
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me---
although you're older---and white---
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

My Papa's Waltz

by Theodore Roethke

   The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
    But I hung on like death:
    Such waltzing was not easy.

    We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
    My mother's countenance
    Could not unfrown itself.

    The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
    At every step you missed
    My right ear scraped a buckle.

    You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
    Then waltzed me off to bed
    Still clinging to your shirt.

Facing It

By Yusef Komunyakaa

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

ORANGES

By Gary Soto

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted—
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickel from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

Outside,

A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.

DRIVING LESSONS

By Neal Bowers

I learned to drive in a parking lot

On Sundays, when the stores were closed—

Slow maneuvers out beyond the light-poles,

No destination, just the ritual of clutch and gas,

My father clenching with the grinding gears,

Finally giving up and leaving my mother

To buck and plunge with me and say,

Repeatedly, “Once more. Try just once more.”

She walked out on him once

When I was six or seven, my father

Driving beside her, slow as a beginner,

Pleading, my baby brother and I

Crying out the windows, “Mama, don’t go!”

It was a scene to break your heart

Or make you laugh—those wailing kids,

A woman walking briskly with a suitcase,

The slow car following like a faithful dog.

I don’t know why she finally got in

And let us take her back

To whatever she had made up her mind to leave;

But the old world swallowed her up

As soon as she opened that door,

And the other life she might have lived

Lay down forever in its dark infancy.

Sometimes, when I’m home, driving

Through the old neighborhoods, stopping

In front of each little house we rented,

My stillborn other life gets in,

The boy I would have been if

My mother had kept on walking.

He wants to be just like her,

Far away and gone forever, wants

Me to press down on the gas;

But however fast I squeal away,

The shaggy past keeps loping behind,

Sniffing every turn.

When I stop in the weedy parking lot,

The failed stores of the old mall

Make a dark wall straight ahead;

And I’m alone again, until my parent get in,

My father, impatient, my mother

Trying hard to smile, waiting for me

To steer my way across this emptiness.

PUTTING DOWN THE CAT

--By Billy Collins

The assistant holdd her on the table,

The fur hanging limp fromher tiny skeleton,

And the veterinarian raises the needle of fluid

Which will put the line through her ninth life.

“Painless,” he reassures me, “like counting

backwards from a hundred,” but I want to tell him

that our poor cat cannot count at all,

much less backwards, much less to a hundred.

On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High

Before
I opened my mouth
I noticed them sitting there
as orderly as frozen fish
in a package.

Slowly water began to fill the room
though I did not notice it
till it reached
my ears

and then I heard the sounds
of fish in an aquarium
and I knew that though I had
tried to drown them
with my words
that they had only opened up
like gills for them
and let me in.

Together we swam around the room
like thirty tails whacking words
till the bell rang

puncturing
a hole in the door

where we all leaked out

They went to another class
I suppose and I home

where Queen Elizabeth
my cat met me
and licked my fins
till they were hands again.

D. C. Berry