Family Portrait (Original)

We smile a picture perfect smiles

With our matching outfits, ironed and clean

hair brushed tightly back

the smell of perfume and cologne filled the air. <watch the shift in verb tense

During the holidays we always got our family picture done

In every picture We put on our bright smiles [in every picture]<simple reoder this clause

with all of us standing close to each other

We hugging and posing e for the camera

in the pictures that we take were a loving happy family.

Those pictures hid our family secrets

They were the cover up to all our lies.

Those smiles were deceitful,

for under those smiles my family was full of pain.

When I think of my parents I think of constant yelling and cursing

My mother's crying enough tears to fill a pond  <fantastic image: sad but apt!!!

things always flying and breaking

all the problems always seemed to lead my father to a bottle of liquor.

I remember the sound of my mother crying

as she locked herself in her room for hours

In the middle of the night waking us three kids to runaway.

With no where to go we always ended up driving around aimlessly

eventually just returning back home by the early morning.

I remember the put downs that my father creatively came up with

he was always good for them.

Constantly using the bottle as his solution

he was useless and hurtful as a drunk. <powerful line: nicely done

After one night of yelling and shouting between the two

my father drank almost an entire bottle.

Every drink he had filled him with rage

and by the end it led him to choke my mother

I called the cops and watched him as they took him away.

Now my father is sober and refuses to touch a drink

it seemed that him getting arrested

and losing his family

Was it exactly what he needed.  

Now a days Mother smiles just because she can   <I like this line, this statement

and is Remarried and loved to a good man

she often lectures me so that I wont make the same mistakes.

We no longer do family portraits  <I believe this where where your poem wants (needs) to end<it's a very powerful ending line

We know better now than to hide behind a picture

If we smile it has to be real

not a deceiving smile full of pain and secrets.

Excellent work exploring a story in this poem, Kiara.  Review my comments for direction; plus, take note how you have lots of run-on sentences and comma splices throughout.  These sentence mechanics need to be cleaned up too.  If you want help, call me and we'll use this poem as a model: 2075264012.   Plus, I will give you full credit if you put in the extra time and effort:)  --Gary