Poison Ivy Girl

Poison Ivy Girl

by Lisa Darnowsky

written for the 2012 Invitational ELL Summer Institute

We sit side by side

Watching reruns of our favorite crime shows

As her sores heals and the itchiness subsides

Our heads tap together as we laugh

I sigh in delight with happiness

It’s like old times of long ago

She needs me and wants to be with me

The sores and spots heal some more

Looking good…feeling good

The easiness of good times subsides

We’re back to me “the mother who annoys”

She the one who “knows all”

The distance between us

Growing like a crevice in a canyon

Lisa Darnowsky is an ESOL teacher at Juniata Park Academy. Lisa attended the 2012 Invitational ELL Summer Institute sponsored by the Philadelphia Writing Project.

Lisa wrote this poem in the context of the summer institute as her first creative writing piece. The piece was in response to a vacation she took this summer shortly before the institute started, a vacation during which her daughter got a terrible case of poison ivy. She revised it after receiving feedback from her journal group.