the creation

Text Version:

my great-great grandmother was a seamstress.
she enjoyed animal patterns and
vintage lace that smelled of dust and
hermes cologne.
sometimes i see her when i wear
snakeskin belts and pearl earrings.

my grandmother was a maid.
she perfected the art of origami towelettes
and bow-accented toilet paper rolls.
she always had the largest bags under her eyes
and her breath always reeked of cigar smoke.

my mother was a bartender.
she got addicted to the hustle and lost herself--
a red-haired vixen taking on moscow
with only ten thousand rubles in her pocket.
i always hated when she spent it on the strange man
next door.

i am the creation--
the result of the animal patterns
the cigar smoke
and the ten thousand rubles
no matter how hard i try not to be.

i adore poems that trace or talk of ancestors and family members. I truly think we are indeed the creation of all those who came before us, and I often think, maybe I wouldn't be writing poetry if my grandmother hadn't decided to move her family to the countryside, or that sort of thing.

You have painted a beautiful picture of these family members, weaving a sense of generational identity with sensory description and details. There are vivid details, like the cologne, the cigar smoke, the red-haired vixen, all these symbolosing traits of these women and what they passed down.

The structure reflects this masterfully, moving down from great-grandmother until we reach the narrator, and after learning of these ancestors we realise we are heading to a realisation; we will always be shaped by those who came before us, even if we resist. That last line makes the piece deeply introspective but with a real haunting feeling. Haunted not by real ghosts, but the memories of the people we grew up with, whether we love or hate their actions.

I found this incredibly poignant <3

Hi Ley! Wow, I enjoyed this poem and the thoughts behind it a lot and it really made me think (apologies for any typos, as I am on mobile and have been typing this over the span of four days during breaks at work XD)

First of all, I love the symbolism behind the formatting. We go between generations, getting closer and closer to you as we learn about these women who are the reason you are alive. I like how in the first three stanzas they are a lot more informative and tell us about these people, then at the end we summarize parts of each of them that have become part of who you are, without any choice. Something about the way that we go from oldest to youngest seems to symbolize a lot to me, even in our own lives. It’s like how we come into this world as a combination of so many people but as we get older and grow more, we develop more specific pieces of ourself that are unique.

I noticed that a lot of the phrases were not very direct, but instead seemed to hint at things and left them up to our own personal experiences to allow us to interpret the words in ways that make the most sense to us.

i am the creation--
the result of the animal patterns
the cigar smoke
and the ten thousand rubles
no matter how hard i try not to be.