Steph Arpaia 

Victor, NY, USA 

  
 
I am attending Cornell Law School and will graduate in 1999. I have written and  
published fiction and nonfiction. The subject of my creative writing is child abuse. I have  
published numerous poems from my book of poetry entitled "An Abused Child Speaks." I  
also wrote and published a play. I have written children’s stories, songs, and screenplays  
and am currently finishing a novel. I also do advertising work. In my creative writing, I  
try to be the voice of abused children. This is why you do not see a picture of me.  Please  
hear them.  Please help them.  
 

abused poem 

small and defenseless  
it cries  
when i grow up  
I am going to be a big and strong  
paragraph  
or maybe even a page  
so I can hide  
amongst the capitals  
and fight back with punctuation 

a poem hiding 

She lays here, battered beyond recognition.  
Her clothes are torn—not really what she is.  
She feels your eyes wander down her broken body  
and your touch upon her shoulders.  She cries,  
"Go away.  Please, turn the page, cover me up.  
I don’t want anyone to see me like this." 

an orphan named rose 

taken from her mother  
when she was just a child  
she was given to strangers  
who never heard her cry  
they gave her only water  
teased with sunlight  
it was their symbol of love  
to watch her die 

bruises 

black 
and blue and 
black and 
blue 
the sky 
an abused child’s body 
 

haiku crying 

a small poem 
just seventeen syllables old 
cries,  ‘god make him stop’ 

earthworm 

a faceless earthworm 
twists its impaled body 
round and round 
cold man made steel 
saved from being 
swept away in the current 
by the vehicle of its torment 
All poems Copyright © 1998 Steph Arpaia. All rights reserved.