Sample Poetry

   Women Don't Riot (For N.B.S)

by: Anna Castillo

"Women Don't Riot" is about all kinds of women. All kinds of women from different backgrounds are mentioned in this poem, but they all have one thing in common and that is that they are strong. I chose this poem because it is very interesting, it really caught my eye.

Women don't riot, not in maquilas in Malaysia, Mexico, or Korea,
not in sweatshops in New York or El Paso.
They don't revolt
in kitchens, laundries, or nurseries.
Not by the hundreds or thousands, changing
sheets in hotels or in laundries
when scalded by hot water,
not in restaurants where they clean and clean
and clean their hands raw.

Women don't riot, not sober and earnest,
or high and strung out, not of any color, 
any race, not the rich, poor,
or those in between. And mothers of all kinds 
especially don't run rampant through the streets.

In college those who've thought it out 
join hands in crucial times, carry signs,
are dragged away in protest.
We pass out petitions, organize a civilized vigil,
return to work the next day.

We women are sterilized, have more children
than they can feed,
don't speak the official language,
want things they see on TV,
would like to own a TV--
women who were molested as children
raped,
beaten,
harassed, which means
every last one sooner or later;
women who've defended themselves
and women who can't or don't know how
we don't--won't ever rise up in arms.

We don't storm through cities,
take over the press, make a unified statement,
once and for all: A third-millennium call--
from this day on no more, not me, not my daughter,
not her daughter either.

Women don't form a battalion, march arm in arm
across continents bound
by the same tongue, same food or lack thereof,
same God, same abandonment,
same broken heart,
raising children on our own, have
so much endless misery in common
that must stop
not for one woman or every woman,
but for the sake of us all.

Quietly, instead, one and each takes the offense, 
rejection, bureaucratic dismissal, disease
that should not have been, insult,
shove, blow to the head,
a knife at her throat.
She won't fight, she won't even scream--
taught as she's been
to be brought down as if by surprise.
She'll die like an ant beneath a passing heel.
Today it was her. Next time who.

El Chicle

"El Chicle" is a poem about laughter and love and how eventually that comes to an end. I chose this poem because it was fun to read. The poem also tells and story, and I like that.

by: Anna Castillo

Mi'jo and I were laughing
ha,ha,ha--
when the gum he chewed
fell out of his mouth
and into my hair
which, after I clipped it,
flew into the air,
on the back
of a dragonfly
that dipped in the creek
and was snapped
fast by a turtle
that reached high
and swam deep.
Mi'jo wondered
what happened to that gum
worried that it stuck
to the back of my seat
and Mami will be mad
when she can't get it out.
Meanwhile, the turtle in the pond
that ate the dragonfly
that carried the hair
with the gum
swam South on Saturday
and hasn't been seen
once since.

Analytical Paragraph

by: Cameron Robbins

       In “El Chicle,” Ana Castillo writes about two people having a good time laughing, and at the same time, telling a life story. When the gum fell out of Mi’jo’s mouth because he was laughing, it symbolizes how your life can be so happy and somehow end up sad. The poem is a life story explaining how laughter or birth eventually turns out to be death. Castillo shows that while fun can happen in your life, then obstacles come up and then eventually the turtle in the poem that represents the sadness and no turning back is never seen again. Castillo writes about the end of a life cycle in these lines: “Meanwhile, the turtle in the pond/ that ate the dragonfly/ that carried the hair/ with the gum/ swam South on Saturday/ and hasn’t been seen/ once since.” In these lines the cycle is ending and the turtle that last has the gum is never seen again. In life, people and things come into our lives but eventually they have to leave. Also, when Mi’jo laughs, his gum falls out of his mouth, representing a new life. All through life, the obstacles change the route of one’s life as we end up going places we have never dreamed of visiting. Castillo created this poem to tell a story; the story was about life and how one day you are laughing and new life is born, and eventually that life (the gum) will never be seen again.