Week 4 #1 Critical

No matter how many times I try I can't stop my father
from walking into my sister's room

and I can't see any better, leaning from here to look
in his eyes. It's dark in the hall

and everyone's sleeping. This is the past
where everything is perfect already and nothing changes,

where the water glass falls to the bathroom floor
and bounces once before breaking.

Nothing. Not the small sound my sister makes, turning
over, not the thump of the dog's tail

when he opens one eye to see him stumbling back to bed
still drunk, a little bewildered.

This is exactly as I knew it would be.
And if I whisper her name, hissing a warning,

I've been doing that for years now, and still the dog
startles and growls until he sees

it's our father, and still the door opens, and she
makes that small oh turning over.

Maire Howe.

I really enjoyed reading this poem. It carries the weight felt when someone is sexually abused. The scene is painted when the poem begins. The first line " no matter how hard I try I cant stop my father from coming into my sister's room." This sets the whole tone for the poem. Howe does a great job with sitting up the setting wit her words. Stanza "and everyone 's sleeping. This is past where everything is perfect already and nothing changes," It shows the peacefulness before the father enters the house. that peacefulness is destroyed and filled with the a troublesome feeling. The dog is also confused, he is trained to protect the family from harm, yet the father is part of the family. My favorite line was "where the water glass falls to the bathroom floor and bounces once before breaking" It was so cinematic... I saw the scene playing out, the glass was falling in slow motion to the ground slowly breaking. With all these feeling going through the poem it simply ends with how her sister said oh. And the reader is left to imagine how she feels.