Jasmine+Harris-Foster

__**Ode to my Blistex**__

I rub my fingertips across the small blue jar with blue and red writing As i lick my chapped lips The thought of putting this yellow substance on my lips overwhelms me I use the my ring finger and run it around the rim of the jar and place the blistex on my lips they tingle as for i have been waiting so long for this moment to come I put the top back on And know that the Blistex will be waiting for me when I need it again.



__**Based on a Promise "Praise Poem"**__

And I remember Me holding your hand while I try and float my feet won't touch the ground

I look at you and wonder why can't I do it you tell me to try again you promised won't let goI close my eyes and lay back I try and lay back the water fills my ears every time you let me go some promise.


 * I want it to pass over (this is a riff from a poem called Prayer by Kim Addonizio)**

I want to to pass over skip me and slap you in the face cause you deserve it

make you hurt real bad cause you deserve it i just want it to pass over

pass over my head, the moon and the stars give me a new start cause i deserve it

Then I see that when it passes over me and hits you you wished it would have passed you over and now you feel just like I do

While writing my poetry I notice that i used personification and didn't really notice it until I looked over the poem. I usually write about things that I go through because it's easier to get my thoughts together on the topic, but getting them down into words is the hardest. While doing this "Poetry Portfolio" I have learned to better analyze poetry

I wish that you would understand what i said Listen for once and let me speak to you Say how I feel for once, because
 * Listen** (**Sonnet)

I want you to listen to me Is that to much to ask from you? Since you've taken everything else from me**


 * Poems by Jorie Graham**

Prayer ||  || Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re- infolding, entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing motion that forces change-- this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself, also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go. I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never. It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never. || - Parenthesis used to justify whatever she is talking about - Periods and commas are used a lot in this poem. - First person

||  ||  **The Way Things Work ** ||  || ||  ||  is by admitting or opening away. This is the simplest form of current: Blue moving through blue; blue through purple; the objects of desire opening upon themselves without us; the objects of faith. The way things work is by solution, resistance lessened or increased and taken advantage of. The way things work is that we finally believe they are there, common and able o illustrate themselves. Wheel, kinetic flow, rising and falling water, ingots, levers and keys, I believe in you, cylinder lock, pully, lifting tackle and crane lift your small head-- I believe in you-- your head is the horizon to my hand. I believe forever in the hooks. The way things work is that eventually something catches. || - The title of the poem goes into the start of the poem.

|| **The Surface** ||  || ||   || It has a hole in it. Not only where I

concentrate.

The river still ribboning, twisting up,

into its re-

arrangements, chill enlightenments, tight-knotted

quickenings

and loosenings--whispered messages dissolving

the messengers--

the river still glinting-up into its handfuls, heapings.

glassy

forgettings under the river of

my attention--

and the river of my attention laying itself down--

bending,

reassembling--over the quick leaving-offs and windy

obstacles--

and the surface rippling under the wind's attention--

rippling over the accumulations, the slowed-down drifting

permanences

of the cold

bed.

I say iridescent and I look down.

The leaves very still as they are carried. ||  ||

Analysis of Jorie Graham's poems While looking at Jorie Graham's poetry I noticed that she does a lot of breaking in her poems. Such as she'll start a line break it then finish it on the next line. I would assume to make the poem more dramatic and have you wonder that it on the next line before you read it. She uses a lot of metaphors and alliteration. Also when reading her work she makes you think and visualize what she is talking about. Especially in the poem "The Way Things Work" on lines 4-6 I can really imagine the colors blue going into blue then into purple then lines 28-29 I can see the horizon and the hand. But it also made me think of a new beginning.