Two Poems
Emilyn Polanco
Ode to Ginger Ale
Sparkling sweet acid
soothes my ailed throat
upstairs in my room on New Year’s Eve.
The adults really miss out
when they overlook you
in favor of Bacardi and bourbon.
Your golden saccharine burn
puts a pep in my step more than Pepsi
ever could, asking “Coca Cola who?”.
You dazzled me at every cousin’s neighbor’s dog’s event,
cooling me as I hid under the table
at every get-together I was ever dragged to.
Schweppes, Canada Dry,
sure enough each branded can had
the same brassy dye.
I’m more of a sprite kind of gal now,
and I don’t stay holed up in my room
or hide under tables anymore.
But your ginger root taste
brings me back to when Party Rock
and Gangnam style blared in my head.
Jefferson Elementary School
Clay colored concrete bricks,
and an orange rubber ground that skinned my knees.
It peeled my hands,
at least I thought it would.
Floors 2-4 were always bummers
but the first floor had music
pouring into delicious speedboat pizza.
We would motor on outside
to the primary-colored playground.
We were warriors there,
carefully balancing over the molten clay,
the heat singeing our navy skirts.
Diana was super tall, so she always survived.
We were leaders of the fall leaves,
at least I was.
Dancing with my subjects,
careful not to crush them into autumn confetti.
Heading inside, I would drag my sketcher’s
(same ones, day in and day out)
on the coiled Brillo-like carpet
in front of the main office.
Squish and squeak past Mr. Colleta
always in a red hoodie,
“I’m going to be late,
I need to hurry!” into the stairwell.
It took forever to get to class.
So many stairs, with slick motor oil railings.
Waves of rubber and vinyl bouncing off
the desolate staircases.
I’d wheeze past the middle floors.
Their bathrooms were always empty of chatter.
There was no ambiance, just the absence
of sound.
I finally made it to the top.
Shaking the goosebumps off my spine,
I’d patter into class,
everyone sitting criss cross applesauce
on the scruffy royal blue carpet.
It was for ghost stories, for escaping
with “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”,
for spacing out and plunging into the deep.
Driving past it now, it was bigger then,
with Jose, Tamara, Eduardo, and everyone else.
The trees still tower, the stairwells still echo I’m sure,
the bench we all made is still there,
even if we aren’t…I wonder if they miss it here too.
Emilyn Polanco is a public health major from Piscataway, NJ, class of 2024, who really enjoys writing. She sees writing as a nice way to express herself. She suspects that, because she uses writing as an emotional outlet, her writing sounds exactly like how she talks. She likes to make the reader feel like she is telling them a story or having them experience a memory of hers. These poems are more focused around her childhood and that feeling of being small, thinking $10 is a huge amount of money, and not knowing how to tie shoes quite yet. So, to whoever reads these poems, she hopes you liked that blast from the past!
These poems were written in a creative writing course taught by Professor Joanna Fuhrman, who selected the pieces for publication in WHR.