“In the hot Summer/Radio ready/ Blue leather walls”: Memory Poems

Students wrote poems about recent and not-so-recent memories and continued working with short lines and sometimes minimalism.

Lesson Note:
“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement…Anybody can have ideas – the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering [line].”

Mark Twain in a Letter to Emeline Beach (10 Feb 1868)

5th Birthday

It was my 5th birthday

And I had a bouncy house

The party came to an end

So we had to strike it down

An uninvited boy runs like the light

He jumps in the bouncy house

And then gets wiped out

Me being mad I drag him out

No one will know

He was wiped out…..

Cookie

On a dark afternoon
Kids lined up
To find the
gingerbread man
Seeing
Chart with
pins on the wall

Kids running
In the library
Going back
To the class
Seeing the soft cookie
Asking if it’s good.

Dreams rise, Stars fall

When we dream, stars fall
Projects on display
“Oh take a look”
As some wandered around
the hallways
others began to
stress out.

Glass
water
And muffled dreams
Until everything falls
Finish your thoughts…

X

Tik Tok the clock strikes twelve
The math test has begun,
Students took their place
And I took mine as well.
I speed through the test
Until there comes question twelve
Demanding the answer to x
What can x be
I ask myself?

Oh my, Oh god
Please help recall this,
My palm begun to sweat
And i began to stress
X
Oh x, what can u be.
Before I had a time to think
Tik tok the clock strikes one
The math test has end.

Future

A nervous wreck
walking up the stairs,
oblivious to the chaos
I hear screaming and panic
Oh no

I walk into the classroom
felt the frightful and fearful glances
anxiousness travels around the room
Dread came upon me, oh what were the chances?
“High school exam scores”
“Don’t wanna check”
I put two and two together
Should’ve seen my face
as I quickly grasp my phone

A small crowd surrounds me
I feel my heart drop faster
and faster
The bright blue button stares,
“Student Details”
I frantically clicked
and closed my eyes
Screams broke out
Good or bad, didn’t know
Opened my eyes, vision unblurred
Two clean 99s stealing the show

Pacer Test

In the hot Summer
Radio ready
Blue leather walls
all around
A line of people
Intense lights

One, music plays
Two, three
Until twenty
My sweat now
running with me
My legs sore
21, the voice called
Atlast
Im at
My limit

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