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.