Erica Allen

1/20/12
“She Was A Fourteen”

The media prints insecurities on my face.
Anything above a two is a disgrace.
Tone or toothbrush are your choices.
Don’t you dare ignore their skeleton voices.

The media wants to bare my bones.
Their goal: make me one of Kate Moss’ clones.
Jaws will drop and heads will turn.
They say dying is not a concern.

The media warns that thin is in.
Don’t count on a bright future if you have a double chin.
The role models now refuse to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I would be worth something too if I were thinner.

The media forgot about the lovely Marilyn.
Adored by millions of men, in her own skin.
A size fourteen but still an icon.
It looks like those times are dead and gone.

The media shows me I am wrong.
Even so, I refuse to play along.
If Monroe were here she’d have a lot to say.
America needs a role model like her today.


2/3/12

“What’s In A Name?”

 My name was pulled from a hard plastic name tag in a hospital in Denver. The nurse that helped deliver me shared my name. I was born in Denver and my name will always hold true to Denver. They took me outside for the first time and I saw the Rocky Mountains. My name will forever be saturated with their light blue color hung by their puffy white snow caps. I grew up and they took me to visit my grandparents that lived on my favorite street in the world. They let me plant in my grandparent’s garden and there I became a snapdragon, like the one I had dropped in the soil. I became more than just a name and developed myself, hidden away inside just like a snapdragon does. We went inside for dessert and ice cream and my name began to taste of peppermint and cheesecake. The two began to saturate my taste buds and soaked my name in their taste. I grew up even more and they bought me a piano. The ebbing and flowing of notes serenaded themselves straight into the heart of my name. My very core became a song, a beautiful melody that continues on and on. Someday I will die and they will lay me to rest. My casket, clothing, and covering will all be made of the finest silk, enveloping my body but letting my soul fly away freely. Many things are in a name. Many things have created my name. My name, Erica.


2/13/12
“Alex”

One year ago on this exact day we had to let God take Alex away

The brave red headed girl had fulfilled her earthly stay

I heard the news at school, just outside that door

My heart became heavy as I crumbled to the floor

Everything became silent, no words were said

What can you say when your friend is pronounced dead

She had fought her disease for many long years

We never gave up hope, hoping it would not end in tears

God took her in and gave her wings to fly

I spent most of that day looking up towards the sky

Even though it was her time to go

We wished we could tell God no

Even though we pleaded, His decision stood

So Alex stayed up where there is only good

Every day I wondered where she was now

I wished I could see her again somehow

I knew she was flying somewhere overhead

Heaven, to be exact, was where she was lead

It’s been a year and we are all still sad

We cry over lost memories we could have had

Her family and friends wonder if she’s okay

Nine days after, I was able to confirm that question while I myself was away

I left after surgery but God said it was not my time, I would be fine

But before I left I got to see the red headed friend of mine

She’s happy there and welcomed me at the gate

She’s joyful and beautiful in a world that knows no hate

Some days I wonder why He let me stay

I think it was so I could say how Alex is while away

Some days I wonder why He sent me back

I believe it was for the answers we sometimes lack




4/14/12

"High School"
Oh high school, you never fail to amaze me. You bring people in and spit them out four years later as someone different. We walk in scared, terrified even, and end up running out as fast as we can, rolling our eyes and cursing your name the whole way out. You take our friends, the ones we’ve known since preschool and turn them against us. You take our enemies and make them our best friends forever. You’re so dang confusing! You take our self esteem and hand it over to others to rip apart and mess around with. Your bathroom stalls become our diaries, as if the swearing is actually aimed towards you. We become your slaves, your servants, saying and doing things you program us to do. It’s almost as if we have no control over ourselves and spend all four years blind until it’s almost graduation time and we are able to open our eyes and either triumph at or turn up our noses in disgust at what we’ve become. You’re a riddle that some do not solve until it’s too late. You end up taking them as hostages and keeping them for an extra year or two. Your innards turn to drugs, alcohol, and fighting machines filled with rage. Some even leave you all together. You make some of us throw in the towel before the four years are up or graduate early to try and gain back our sanity. I guess you’re not that bad if we figure out your code, your riddle. We came in so innocent, naive and maybe even ignorant. Now we race out as if our own shells of a body have become monsters. We have become the person we said we were never going to be. We look back and know we can’t change it. We could have done better. All we can do is walk across your stage, graduate, and look towards the future.


5/2/12
"Our Own Breakfast Club"
The Breakfast Club. Have you ever seen this classic 1985 movie? Just in case you haven’t, I’ll explain it to you. A group of kids are forced to attend Saturday school. As if that wasn't horrible enough, the kids are all from different cliques within their school. There’s the jock, the basket case, the brain, the princess, and the criminal. As you can imagine, it is not the ideal group of people to have locked in a room together. Their assignment while at Saturday school is to write a paper on who they think they are.

Sitting in class today, I realized something. We, the Creative Writing students, resemble our own Breakfast Club. Although we may have chosen this class instead of being forced into it like the kids in the movie, we still share similarities. For example, we all come from different cliques within Storm Lake High School. We might not be from the exact cliques in the movie, but we are all different and unique. Eventually, the kids from The Breakfast Club came together and realized that in some ways, they were all the same. We have all come together in that way this semester as well. Our writings slowly but surely became easier to present because we grew to know each other and realized that we were all rooting each other on. Sometimes we had personalities that clashed, but we grew to accept each other’s individuality and uniqueness. We were also forced to write like the kids. The assignments may not have been, “Who do you think you are?” but I think who we are showed in our writings anyways. We learned a lot about each other this semester just by reading and listening to each other’s Turn it in Tuesday creations and in-class writings. I believe we have discovered, just as the kids did, that we are all alike in some ways. At the end of the movie, the students leave their teacher a letter to answer the question as well as share their observations. I believe our letters could be the same in regards to what we found out while in this class. On that note, here is both their letter as well as ours, “What we found is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the breakfast club"