Learning to Fight Dragons

Background on This Section of Poetry

When I first found my written voice, I was already a college student. I found that creative writing not only helped me to tell my own history/experiences, but it could also be used to break silences in our communities. The following section of poetry is taken from my Capstone project which started when I began to wonder why I was not taught how to write creatively earlier. Yes, I was exposed to literature and poetry (especially in high school Honors English classes), but I was not actually taught how to form a poem or given the creative freedom to do so. We were being exposed to all these great authors and books, but I never felt that it was so that I could someday be an author myself. It was so that we had a basic knowledge of literature and history. I remember no mention or encouragement to write our own histories.

Through my research for my Capstone project, I began to understand why. I had attended schools in low-income areas where, because of a lack of funding, arts are usually the first classes cut from the curriculum.

In Pacific Grove, at Robert Down Elementary where 85% of the student population is white, there is a large creative writing program - even for second graders! This program was started by bringing in a local poet to teach the children (and the teachers) about creative writing. Using one second grade classroom's methods, and through the help of a budding non-profit program started by a fellow co-worker, I brought this idea to Manzanita Elementary in Seaside where 94% of the students are considered minorities. With the help of some friends, I taught a 4-week after school creative writing class.

The poems in this section came from my experiences with the children at Manzanita Elementary. The dragon image came to me after reading one child's unfinished story, which I write about in Even Children Have Dragons. After getting to know this child, I could not separate his writing from his life. When I learned that his father abused him, I read his story differently. I wondered who was the dragon in his story. Was it just an arbitrary character? Probably. But I began to see dragons to be anything that stands in the way of our well being, that contributes to inequalities, that inhibits us from being everything that we could be.

The dragons in my title, "Learning to Fight Dragons," are our inequitable systems, the politics that create unequal opportunities, and the history of racism, classism and all other "ism's" built into our laws and institutions. While teaching the children, both they and I were learning how to fight against those particular dragons through our writing. If the children feel that they have a voice, then hopefully they will use it to help others see the inequities in our communities.

One other metaphor I used the dragon image for was my own thoughts and fears that inhibit me from using my voice the way I want. For example, in What is an Emotion?, I start off seeing the children as dragons in order to portray my fear of them, of what they might think of me, of what I was trying to teach, and of realizing my own inexperience as a teacher. Sometimes your biggest obstacle is yourself.

For me, writing about these issues and about my experiences, being truthful to myself and others, is a way to fight against my own dragons. I hope my writing helps to fight all types of dragons and encourages others to find their voices as well.

by E. M. Soos

Poems from Learning to Fight Dragons

What Are You Really Doing?

Even Children Have Dragons

H.

If I Hadn't

What is an Emotion?

I Hear Poems in Their Lives

What Are You Really Doing?

For the teacher who asked this question
after I introduced the writing class

I've built a tiny world in my heart.
The people in my heart travel
through veins, vessels, arteries
looking to understand every part
of my body, but they always return
to the center, core, corazon.
My heart people work together
keep their earth alive
swim on white blood cells
sew scabs over cuts
extend hands full of oxygen
greet each other with hugs
dance together to the beat
of their homeland.
What I'm really doing is
trying to share this world
teach children to dance
with their own hearts,
bring my heart people
to exist beyond my body,
live in hands of presidents
popes, kings, queens,
in the mouths of every child.

by E. M. Soos

Background on this poem

Even Children Have Dragons

For G. We all miss you.

From the very beginning, your story was a poem,

If you give a Dragon
a glass of water,
If you give a Dragon
a glass of water,
He'll cry out fire.
He'll want to blow
fire at you,
but he will blow
steam at you.

I never thought about it until
you didn't come back, until your
mother took you to a safer place
away from the father who used his fists.
I never thought you would know a
real dragon, I just believed that you
had an imagination that would fill
Lake Superior, that your dragon
would eventually be slain.
I never thought that the reason you pulled
the wings from ladybugs was
to keep them safe in your hand.

by E. M. Soos

Background on this Poem

H.

A little brown face looks up at me
Her eyebrows pushed together
I'm sorry we made you sad, Miss Erin.
She is one of the few children
who tried to listen today, who
did not run around the classroom,
write ASS on the blackboard,
giggle when I scolded.
She is sorry for something she did not do.
I wonder as she bends to help me clean
up the plastic straw covers, empty juice boxes
crushed pretzels in the carpet. She tries to lift a chair
onto a desk only inches shorter than she.
I wonder at a child who told me
I didn't get to eat today
when I handed her an apple, then
this is so yummy as she bit into its green skin.
I pick up ten other apples, uneaten
remember the other day.
She wouldn't throw away a granola bar
that had dropped on the ground.
Sand covered its edges, but she held it
in both hands, savoring its rough
oatmeal touch, as other children threw theirs
to the ground, crushing them under shoes.

by E. M. Soos

Background on this poem

If I Hadn't

For the mother who asked if her
other daughter could join the class late

If I hadn't been standing outside,
four bags - full of pencils, writing pads, markers
green apples, juice boxes - surrounding my legs,
waiting for the principal to show us our room
If five children hadn't come up to me
interrupted our conversation with

What are we doing today, Miss Erin?
Can I have a juice now?
What are those things in the bags for?
Do I have to wear a name tag?
Can I be in your group please?

If I hadn't been worrying that we might
not have a classroom that day
If I hadn't forgotten to introduce myself
shake your hand, look you in the eye
If I hadn't been white, and
you hadn't been black
would you still have walked away that day
humphed through your nose
muttered under your breath
Would the history of our skin colors
still have kept us from becoming friends?

by E. M. Soos

Background on this poem

What is an Emotion?

For my father, who helped me
see the humor in this situation

I stand in front of dragons ten mountains tall,
teeth red with blood, long as houses,
feet covered with silver scales,
tongues of firebombs. My stomach
is kneaded dough. The dragons' eyes
stare at me. I know I must speak.

What is an emotion?

The dragons' heads tilt,
one raises his left wing slowly,
Like when you move?

The dragons get smaller.
They look up at me from desks
only two and a half feet tall,
silver caps on their teeth, shoelaces
untied, voices like crickets.

Um... no, that's motion. E-motions are like feelings. Who can give me an example of a feeling?

Ten hands raise, ticking back and forth
at the highest speed of a metronome.
I pick a boy sitting by himself, mouth
opened in an "O." Um, a feeling is...
I feel tired?

The other children yell, I know, I know!
I stand at the blackboard,
the chalk between my fingers
like twenty horses dragging my hands.
I try to write.

I want to say,
an emotion is like an animal that lives inside us. When we are hugged, we feel like kittens with their mother. When our sister takes our toys we feel like roaring lions. When our friends ignore us, we feel like puppies in a cage.

Instead I find the words are bigger dragons,
their breaths of fire drown my pleas.

by E. M. Soos

Background on this poem

I Hear Poems in Their Lives

I listen to all the rumors, the hanging
facts of the children's lives, and I see
a young boy leaning over a piece of paper,
writing about fighting Pokemon characters,
not mentioning that his father used the belt
on him again last night.

I see two sisters who were born minutes apart,
J. is three feet tall and weighs 30 pounds,
J.A. is four foot five and weighs 120 pounds.
They do not sit next to each other,
say, this is my sister or hold hands.
Their other sister has a different last name,
a different father. She lies to me, tells me
I didn't get a snack, so she can bring one home.
I don't ask her why, hand her the bag.

I see a boy lay his head on a desk
covering his story with his deep breaths.
If I ask him why he's falling asleep, he might say,
I was up playing video games last night.
No one tucked him in,
made sure his teeth were brushed,
saw that he had eight hours of sleep.

I see eight children who do not know
their mothers or fathers, they have
a parent or two in prison,
they are raised by older sisters, brothers,
or sick grandparents.

I see these things and know
that poems are in these children.
I hear their pencils moving like windmills on water,
sending ripples to edges of fields,
learning to fight their dragons every day.

by E. M. Soos

Background on this poem

Ghosts of El Salvador

In front of piles of rotting wood, stacked
On a cracked foundation, five ghosts float.
Four of them have the likeness of boys,
Their pale faces unwrinkled through their frowns.
They clasp their air-like hands together,
Stronger than tanks, although shadows of ether.
The fifth ghost is behind the others,
His black priest gown does not sway as the wind
Creaks through the broken structure.

Two young girls walk toward the crumbled building.
Everyone in San Antonio Abad says that the place is haunted,
That people have tried to rebuild the home
Only to find their work undone the next day.
The girls' steps become shorter and shorter.
Can you see anything? Gloria whispers.
The other girl shakes her head, grabs Gloria's hand.
Together, they step over what was once a doorway,
Pass through the five ghosts, then glance at each other.
Do you feel that? Gloria asks, looking behind her.

They can feel what happened those years ago in 1979,
The fear in their mouths is that of the ghosts.
They cannot see the four boys sweeping outside the house,
Cannot feel the ground shaking beneath them
Cannot see a small army and tank approaching
Cannot see blood from the boys' bodies, shots between their eyes
Cannot see Father Ortiz run toward the tank, palms out
Cannot taste the weight of the tread over his body
Cannot see the tank crash through the walls of the house
Cannot see the women inside the kitchen
Cannot smell the food burning on the stove.

But they can feel
The life and death of that moment, the cold reach
Of the Father's hand as he strokes their faces.

by E. M. Soos

La Luna

For the Co-Madres of El Salvador

She sits naked on a wooden chair. The specks of wood in her ass
bother her less than the black t-shirt that has been torn into four
pieces; one piece for her eyes, one for her hands behind her back,
two tie her feet to the chair. She cannot see the windowless
basement, the roaches that scatter across the floor, the three
policemen who stand in front of her. She can hear their zippers
slide open, feel her legs shake when their rifles hit her chair.
Tell us the names of the women. She lifts her head, thinks of the
pictures they had shown her on the wall, pictures of her friends,
companions, the women whose sons, husbands, had been given
electric shocks to the head, shot in the back, decapitated;
the women who were fighting to stop the disappearances. To you
they're all named Maria, she thinks. She says nothing. She hears
a pair of boots clunk closer. The man's breath smells of tequila
as he whispers in her right ear, You, you are like la luna,
the moon, with all its holes. The men untie her feet, lift her
from the chair, throw her to the ground. One man holds her
legs open, another takes his rifle, thrusts it into her vagina.
Her body slides with the dirt on the cold cement floor. Their hard
penises scrape the walls of her bleeding vagina, rip open her anus.
The moon hears her cries.

by E. M. Soos