This poem is has a very dark undertone to it. It talks about how the child sees the father’s alcoholism. He described things like “we romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf”, it almost looks like even though the father was a brute and mistreated the child the wording, “romped” has a playful aspect to it. Yet ultimately it’s sad because in the end the child just wants the love of the father so bad that he is left clinging to his shirt.

This poem has an aspect of boys trying to find where they fit on the pecking order and see who the leader should be. It is interesting that even at the ages of six and seven how these boys were already looking to establish a hierarchy comparing it to war and generals in the army. 

In this poem the girl is starting to identify herself as a woman, where her mom says now she needs wash her own clothing and sheets. This is a girl who does not yet feel that she is quite a woman, but that in the Latin society she is having her “coming out party”. This party is her transition from a little girl to a woman and she doesn’t want it. 

This poem is about a person finding their new identity as an American Citizen. While this person is expressing love for America there is also reluctance. The poem seems to express the attraction and the antagonism the person felt in the nation. Especially in the line “I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!”

This is a person simply asking to what happens when a dream isn’t realized. Is it something that stays with us as a weight on our hearts, is it something that gnaws at our inner most feelings? Or is it something that just explodes and is gone? This is a person sounds like someone who hasn’t deferred a dream, because they don’t seem to know how it feels.