Poetry Workshop Paragraphs 1 - 3

and the poem continues to add stanzas each day as it must be presented on Monday the next poetry class.  Three more paragraphs in two nights (and I can't goof off on Saturday like I usually do).

We lived north of Gary, Indiana;

forests of smokestacks belched dark

plumes by day, by night, sickly yellow 

bathed in flickering sodium light.

We coughed all the time, our noses

caked with dried snot, our clothes grey with

soot, our cheeks ruddy and scabbed with cold. 

Weekends we drove north to visit Dad;

my sister pocketed the gas money from Mom

and charged us each 25 cents for the trip

Dad had black friends; he didn’t last long in Cicero.

Us kids all slept upstairs in a cold room

on a dirty linoleum floor huddled together

unwillingly

as we bumped into each other getting

dressed in the darkness, being careful

not to see our own emergence from

childhood, or the others