Why do they keep praying
If nothing has changed

Sleeping under dark clouds
Thankful for things
Like spearmint and snow
Senses like
A rotting apple
An eyeball
Decaying
Out of socket
I can see clearly now

Hi my name is Ayiana
Once upon a time,
I was a young girl
Seeing the world through rose colored glasses
my mother sobbed to herself at the kitchen table
Wondering why
Crying tears that would not relinquish 
depressed feelings

Madeline.
The first name I was ever given
A symbol of my mother’s overbearing need to go her way or no way
Her way had no meaning
It was simply a name she thought was pretty
And pretty was more important than memorializing my dad’s time in the Army

It’s hard to understand what
to feel when his words say
he loves me but the tone of
his voice says the only thing
he cares about is himself.
Scars stain his back
and my wrists
but the only real scars are
the ones on our hearts.

As our war rages on, I’m caught in a crossfire.
One side shrieks its anthem of misguided hope.
The other, facing reality’s certain dread head on.
While I, a teenager caught in the midst of battle, seek refuge.

I was sitting in my private school, around age 8
The religion teacher said, everyone sit in a circle
Don’t speak
Close your eyes
Raise your hand when you hear God speaking to you
One by one each child raised their hand
I sat
Thinking

heavy named girl, 
Your value is that of the anchor tied to your feet, the depth of your mother’s tongue when she looked upon you,
saw your grandmother’s eyes in your soft brown face and
pulled from history the consonants and long vowels that may jangle around in her apron

A big city.
Different people,
Modern architecture,
A whole world to explore.

I open my eyes to the gray sky.
I’m lying in the same yard,
Next to the same house,
On the same hill.
The same place I’ve been my whole life.

I have so many secrets to tell you through soft poems and open mouthed kisses on rosy flushed cheeks of best friends turned lovers and onto mothers and peaches bought from roadside shacks on small town access roads; toothy grins slyly hanging onto our faces —  

I sit 
in a green plastic booth
Sandwiched between a purple table 
and a streaky orange wall
I keep my fingers squished into my ears 
while I watch a librarian chase a girl my age around 
She has a purple skateboard in one hand 

The way they teach poetry in schools

Is not the only way it can be written

               Structured stanzas

             and 

  parallel pantoums

Put a limit on how poets can      speak what they FEEL

    Creativity cannot be defined

mango juice drips from my fingers seeps into the brown dirt dirt that holds roots that reach across countries roots that stitch together centuries roots that spread and cannot be confined mango juice drips from my fingers plunges to the earth earth my mother raced across earth that felt the weigh

(A palindrome poem meant to be read top to bottom,and then bottom to top)