"The Whipping" by Robert Hayden

The old woman across the way    is whipping the boy againand shouting to the neighborhood    her goodness and his wrongs. 

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,    pleads in dusty zinnias,while she in spite of crippling fat    pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling    boy till the stick breaksin her hand.  His tears are rainy weather    to woundlike memories:

My head gripped in bony vise    of knees, the writhing struggleto wrench free, the blows, the fear    worse than blows that hateful

Words could bring, the face that I    no longer knew or loved . . .Well, it is over now, it is over,    and the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against    a tree, exhausted, purged—avenged in part for lifelong hidings
    she has had to bear.

So i read "The Whipping" by Robert Hayden. At first i was kind of hesitant to read it because i was scared it would be very violent. I thought that it would be about the kids past and how he was abused. When i started reading it i saw that i was wrong. Its about a how he saw a kid getting whipped. It was kind of sad, but really good at the same time!

While i was annotating there were a few words that i didn't know like, "zinnias," "bony," "purged," and "avenged." I also noticed that she didn't use any similes but things similar to them, like "His tears are rainy weather to woundlike memories."There is also a part where she kind of repeats herself. "it is over now, it is over..."

Thats not all i saw but that is mostly what i saw in it. I liked this poem a lot because I could really picture it in my head like i have seen it before.