Crema Nights

Take me back to the quiet piazza

where parked bicycles

and closed coffee shops coat the streets,

the way sand veils a desert.

Take me back to the dark cerulean skies

where harsh winds and tree branches

dance vivaciously throughout the night.

Take me back to the buzzing lampposts,

the tuned-out, clustered conversations,

the clear ponds and towering peach trees.

Take me back to everything that still keeps

the secrets we made that summer so long ago.

Take me back to Crema,

the city that reignited my flickering flame.

The city that taught me how to hurt.

The city that taught me to love

passionately,

viciously,

and without refrain.

 

Penance

Lord, forgive me,

for I have sinned.

My faith in your presence

has dwindled and thinned.

 

I’m not the same girl

that would pray every night.

I stopped going to church,

I think I’ve lost sight.

 

I want to come back,

but I fear it’s too late!

I never got baptized,

I’ll be dismissed at the gate.

 

I’d like to go to heaven,

if afterlife truly exists,

A place of eternal happiness,

Where only virtue persists.

 

I just need a second chance,

and that I’ll have to earn.

Through belief and devotion,

I’m sure my faith will return.

 

Lord, please forgive me,

and help me to see

I need to have faith in something

If not in you, then in me.

 

14-Year Old Daughter

The clock won’t stop ticking,
she thinks she needs more time.
Her mother says not to worry,
soon everything will turn out fine.

Innocent, poor, young girl,
she’s having second thoughts.
Never having left Colombia,
her stomach is filled up with knots.

She’ll get a new passport,
and a brand new ID.
A man will come to pick her up,
they’ll leave at a quarter to three.

Innocent, poor young girl,
how bad you were betrayed.
But your mother needed money,
so she sold your life to the trade.

Surely, you think it’s safe,
convinced by their sweet lies.
But soon you’ll understand it all,
these kinds of things will traumatize.

Innocent, poor young girl.
With hope, one day you’ll flee.
And live your life the way you want,
somewhere that’s happy, safe and free.

Poetic Response Analysis

 

For this assignment, I was tasked with writing a poetic response consisting of a variety of poetic styles and topics. I wrote a free verse poem about an Italian city, a poem describing my religious stance, and finally a ballad based on child trafficking. Through the use of rhetorical elements and literary devices, I was able to develop three poems that convey emotions of nostalgia, guilt, and betrayal.

My first poem, “Crema,” was a free verse and therefore did not follow a syllabic structure or rhyme scheme. However, I still implemented an assortment of poetic techniques to meet my purpose of describing the city of Crema as vividly and creatively as possible. Repetition of the line “take me back” was used throughout the poem to emphasize the overall tone of nostalgia. I used personification, “harsh winds and tree branches dance vivaciously,” to describe the excitement that the speaker finds in Crema’s nights. To further enforce the theme of night holding significance to the speaker, I employed imagery to establish that the setting takes place in the evening, “dark cerulean skies,” “quiet piazzas,” “closed coffee shops,” and “buzzing lampposts.” The audience for this poem includes anyone who has ever reminisced about a memorable time in their past.

My second poem was written about my personal spiritual beliefs and where I stand on religion. The poem “Penance” does not follow a syllabic structure but does have a rhyme scheme of “abcb.” The reason I chose to employ this particular rhyme scheme is because it closely resembles the rhyme scheme of many of the prayers I recited as a child. In addition, I chose the title “Penance” because it refers to the confession a church member gives to a priest in exchange for forgiveness. These strategies of tying in religious features into the poem helps fulfill the poem’s purpose of capturing my faith in God, or lack thereof. The line “lord, forgive me” is repeated in the first and last stanza to emphasize the immense amount of guilt I feel for not being as devoted to God as I should be. Since guilt is such a universal emotion, the audience for this poem could be anyone who has ever feared the consequences of their actions.

The final poem, “14-Year Old Daughter,” depicts the story of a young girl who is sold to child sex-traffickers by her own mother. The poem is based on the harsh reality that many children unfortunately face today, in virtually every country, with some children even being sold by their own families for money. “14-Year Old Daughter” is a ballad, which means it follows a rhyme scheme of “abcb” as well as a syllabic structure of 6 syllables in the first two lines and 8 syllables in the last two lines of each stanza. “Innocent, poor, young girl” is also repeated in every other stanza to follow the rhythmic prosody of a traditional ballad. To maintain the rhyme scheme and syllabic structure of the ballad, I varied the syntax in the lines “Never having left Colombia, her stomach is filled up with knots” and “how bad you were betrayed.” Lastly, this poem was directed towards people who might not be aware of the child sex-trafficking issue that exists all over the world. “14-Year Old Daughter” was also written with the purpose of making readers sympathize with the “innocent, poor, young girl” who has experienced betrayal by her own mother, a betrayal that many child victims face in the real world.

During this entire process of drafting, writing and revising my poems, I found that incorporating certain literary techniques and rhetorical strategies helped me to improve the quality of my work. Paying close attention to pathos, syntax, audience, and tone, for example, helped me to strengthen the message of my poems and make the emotions more impactful.

Citations

“What Are the Statistics on Human Trafficking of Children?” Ark of Hope for Children, 31 July

2017, arkofhopeforchildren.org/child-trafficking/child-trafficking-statistics.