Claire Schwartz

My Father’s Daughter

I am my father’s daughter

Stubborn

Loud

and, Silly

I am my father daughter

With Schwartz’

Eyes, cheekbones, and compulsiveness

We love soccer

And polenta

And the Puget Sound

And making people laugh

And being like each other

I am not my mother’s daughter

She is like the moon

And I am the sun

I don’t have her compassion

Or her linearity.

I don’t have her patience

Or her orderliness.

I have the curse of a girl whose father loved her best.

Willette Women

Willette women, Willette women

hide your pain away,

don’t let it through the cracks

made by yesterday.

Willette women, Willette women

laugh your pain away.

let the tingle and shatter of your voice

be the mask of happiness to portray.

Willette women, Willette women

cry your pain away.

but only when it’s dark at night

can your tears break.

A Poppy of a Girl

I am a poppy,

Red, bold, and strong.

I sway under sunshine

Dancing to the wind.

I am a poppy

Alone in a world of roses

Yellow roses

Pink roses

White roses

Red too.

I am a poppy

The world wants to make a rose:

Soft, delicate, feminine.

I am a poppy

Trying to be a rose

Yet I do not want the thorns.

Red

Claire Renee

Renee Marie

Marie Nicole

Names interwoven through blood.

The Willette-Schwartz women have

Brown hair

And

Brown eyes.

They laugh too loud

And talk with their bodies

And love to read

And are too introspective

And don’t always speak when they want to.

The Willette-Schwartz women are shades of red

Claire Renee is the bright red of wild strawberries: too exuberant

Renee Marie is the color of candlelit sangiovese in a wine glass: too thoughtful

Marie Nicole is the violet-red of raspberry jam: too compassionate.

The Willette-Schwartz women are shades of red

. . . In a world that wants pale pink.

January

A pocket full of primroses

On a foggy winter morning

As if it were April

All stuffed in a pot

Red, purple, pink, and yellow

Against a world of grey

Should we tell them that it’s January?

That it’s no time to be a flower?

That they should come back later?

Come back later pocket full of primroses

The world is too harsh

For the innocence of your petals

The children will rip your stems

And stuff you in a vase

Waiting for you to rot

The frost will eat your colors

And turn a sunset into dusk

Leaving only barren skeleton

A pocket full of primroses

Surviving in a flower’s no-man’s land

Cosmos

I am an infinitely incomplete piece of art.

I am a cultivated palate of colors that create

the rosiness of my cheeks,

the flecks of green in my eyes, and

the chestnut strands of my hair.

I am the constellations of freckles splashed across my face.

I am organs, flesh, and bone.

I am an insignificant speck of stardust with human features and a human name.

I am my own cosmos.

I am a blank page

waiting for the words

stashed in the obscure corners

of my mind

to form on the tip of my tongue.

I am the word effervescence,

but also, woebegone and surreptitious and imbroglio,

but mainly,

I am my own cosmos.

I am a poppy:

red

bright

bold.

I am a loud laugh with friends

as daylight fades

and night wraps itself

like a blanket over the sky.

I am free

I am trapped.

I am a girl so full of contradictions

it is not possible

to ever encase me

with a poem.

I am complex.

I am my own cosmos.