In humanities, we have started to write poems. This year, I’ve written 4 poems. One of the poems that I’m very proud of is a haiku. I really like writing haikus because they are short and very specific. This is my haiku:

The crisp autumn breeze.

Wind whistles through the branches.

Leaves fall to the ground.

The main challenge of writing this poem was syllables. I wanted to have other words, like instead of ground I wanted to say pavement. Since you can only have 5 syllables, then 7, then 5, I had to find away to work around extra syllables. Autumn is my favorite season, so it was fun to write about that.

The other poem that I am proud of is called Glass Ceiling. I wrote this poem with Margaret. We have submitted it to the NYPL contest. This is the poem:

They’re standing up there,

Triumphantly

I wonder,

How did this happen?

If I had been born differently, would it be different?

Would I be triumphant?
Instead of sitting here,

Watching their success.

That should have been mine.

Why are they standing there?

Not even breaking a sweat,

While I’m down here, sweating hard,

Earning 79 cents to their dollar.

I would raise my voice if I thought it would make any difference.

But as I look up at them, and they work ignorantly, I realize,

They feel no remorse for me,

They only care for their own prosperity,

That could have been mine.

They say I’m not working hard enough,

Deep down, I’m wondering if it’s true,

If they really are working harder than I am,

And as I sit beneath them,

I ask myself why,

I’m looking up at a glass ceiling while they look at the sky.

I really like this poem because it sums up my feelings on the subject of sexism. That is one of the things that I love about poetry. Sometimes I feel like I can’t talk about some subjects out loud, but then when I write poetry about it, it seems like it’s easier to talk about. One challenge that I faced while writing this poem was words. For example, there were plenty of times when we wanted to use “glass ceiling,” but we also wanted to save that for the end, to make it more powerful.

I am really proud of all my poetry, and I can’t wait to write more!