In Ms Carteno’s 6th grade classes, we read a short poem by Valerie Worth called “Safety Pin” that imagined a safety pin as some very different things (a shrimp! a fish!). We talked about how poetry let’s us play with language and make even the most boring objects strange and unfamiliar. We wrote short poems imagining regular, everyday classroom items as new and surprising things.
303
Ruler
-Genesis R
The ruler looks like a long finger pointing at a window
and like a sword swinging in a war and like a wand playing
a trick on a kid.
Pencil
-Andrew
The pencil
it is a lot of things.
It goes
to war
with paper
and the
grey graphite
is the remains of
their enemies,
it is like
a baton
the fingers
done with
the pencil
or it can
be a
wizard’s
wand casting
a spell on
evil monsters,
filling the
paper wirth
grey nothingness.
Book
-Jimena
The bird is going to fly
through a galling building and
is injured.
304
Salt Grain
-Omari L
Salt grain, salt grain, salt grain is like the middle child
of the family, the sugar is like the smallness I felt
because I’m short. A really small rock is like the big brother
of the family. The kool-aid is like the little brother and the sand
is like the evil twin in the family.
And the broken crumbs around like the favorite cousin.
308
Pencil
-Manny
A pencil is like a ton of people crossing a bridge.
A pencil is like a stick that
people write with.
A pencil is like a rocketship and
the eraser is the engine.
Pencil Case
-Aden K
A metro going 100 miles an hour
breaks gone.
People panicking and the train
stops because the breaks are back.
Sticky Note
-Genna V
Sticky notes
as boring as possible
until you imagine it as a house with no roof
wind breezing through.
