1. Identify the poetic devices in use (simile, metaphor, alliteration, personification, onomatopoeia, assonance, etc.).
   

My Father Is a Simple Man

by Luis Omar Salinas

I walk to town with my father

to buy a newspaper. He walks slower

than I do so I must slow up.

The street is filled with children.

We argue about the price

of pomegranates, I convince

him it is the fruit of scholars.

He has taken me on this journey

and it’s been lifelong.

He’s sure I’ll be healthy

so long as I eat more oranges

and tells me the orange

has seeds and so is perpetual;

and we too will come back

like the orange trees.

I ask him what he thinks

about death and he says

he will gladly face it when

it comes but won’t jump

out in front of a car.

I’d gladly give my life

for this man with a sixth

grade education, whose kindness


and patience are true . . .

The truth of it is, he’s the scholar,

and when the bitter-hard reality

comes at me like a punishing

evil stranger, I can always

remember that here was a man

who was a worker and provider,

who learned the simple facts

in life and lived by them,

who held no pretense.

And when he leaves without

benefit of fanfare or applause

I shall have learned what little

there is about greatness.









Family


My family lives inside a medicine chest:

Dad is the super-size band aid, strong and powerful

but not always effective in a crisis.

Mom is the middle-size tweezer,

which picks and pokes and pinches.

David is the single small aspirin on the third shelf,

sometimes ignored.

Muffin, the sheep dog, is a round cotton ball, stained and dirty,

that pops off the shelf and bounces in my way as I open the door.

And I am the wood and glue which hold us all together with my love.