"scantron" poems
When you’ve asked yourself, “what the hell am I doing with my life?”
Five times before you’ve even had your morning coffee
Which isn’t enough, so you grab a second coffee
Because you stayed up until sunrise writing a lab report on the psychological effects of coffee
They call that an education.
When you stare at screens and sheets of paper
Until Shakespeare’s sonnets and Sir John A. Macdonald
Are scratched into the blackboard on the inside of your brain
Only to have the slate wiped clean
The second your Scantron card spells “success” in Braille,
They call that an education.
When you’re swimming in, shall we call it, the Academian Sea
And tentacles reach out and start to pull you under one by one
And the lifeguards on the shore simply tell you to swim harder,
They call that an education.
I remember walking onto campus feeling so inspired
Ready to be re-wired
Until they said my arts degree would never get me hired
Now the time keeps passing by and I always feel so tired
And for what reason?
I’ve read countless books on history and Hamlet and how to speak Italian yet it seems as though the most I’ve learned is all the different ways I can doubt myself
I am creative, I am well-read, I am kind, I am caring, but I am a history major
And in a place where 3.0s and 4.0s and future capital value is practically etched into our skin for the world to read like a bad tattoo
Apparently that means I’m not going anywhere.
There are so many days when I want my tattoo removed
So people will stop staring at the decimal points and prerequisites that distract from the rest of me and look me in the eyes for a change and see in my smile that this is who I really am
But instead I’ll probably stay up late again
Learn names and dates again
Forget them after the test again
Because when you stare at that sheet of paper if you’re dedicated (or crazy) enough to make it that far
And you cover up your tattoo with your graduation gown only for them to draw your degree wherever enough skin shows to prove to the world that they’ve churned out another one
They call that an education.
Oct 29, 2014
Oct 29, 2014 at 9:30 PM UTC
Were you alive when the
bricks began to crumble
beneath our hand-held, picket line
across the parking lot in front of some
school that no one bothered to name?
Our exhaustion-mumbled whispers
skipping across lips dropping to the street
that tapered ladders on gargantuan gadflies as the summer heat
etched the tear lines into mud tracks against
our ruddied faces.
Cohorts torn into flip stands
layered toward standing political sores --
tell me how to cross my t’s and fill in scantron circles before
the suits step over brown-bag lunches
to stretch the yawning yellow tape over the students’ lockers.
We were strung up the flag pole, almost posted as decapitated heads for the public.
The political analysts call this “The biggest school closing in decades.”
Under teeming hammer-strikes :
glasses shred to paper-splinters
before a young boy’s diploma
crying white chalk bricks
from university’s doors instead on to
prison yard orange jumpsuits.
Can we call this a school improvement project
or can we call this the Same Salem Witch Hunt
As unwashed teachers and students alike deck the sidewalks like
Either Christmas decorations on Michigan Avenue or
Inmates on the gallows platform
I’m completely unable to read the television marquee that told the neighborhood that City Hall was too stuffed with paperwork to defend the mothers and invisible fathers.
I’m completely unable to write out of respect for these children’s already-carved in stone pathway to the gutter, graveyard, and/or prisons.
In the first wink of dawn
We will all scatter
To our respective positions
Carved out in concrete before the
barricades fall
to flood the street.
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 3:52 AM UTC
When we were little
They used to call them
Spotted
Orange
Lizards.
I think they were trying not to scare us with
The words
Standards
Of
Learning.
Standardized testing.
Those things that you need Number Two pencils for.
Those things that they prepare you for
Every year
For months.
Those things that if a cell phone goes off
The entire class comes back
During the summer
And retakes it.
Those things that they give you hours and hours
To take,
Out of our normal schedule,
Even though they only take
Forty-five minutes
Those things that don't even count
Towards our grades
Because
"They're really assessing the teachers--
But it's important to do your best."
SOLs.
Those things that people stress over.
Even though your answers
Are only
Tiny gray dots
On a
Scantron sheet.
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 10:54 AM UTC
The first was taken before we ever met.
My sister: curled beneath insulated blankets,
a pink bow vaseline-glued to her bald head,
glassy infant eyes turned in the direction
of a picture of me (red striped shirt, my favorite overalls,
velcro shoes). Mom taped it against the outside
of her incubator; so she would know her big brother
even if I wasn’t allowed to visit her yet.
The second shows the two of us at the back door
of our house on Circle Slope Drive. Her palms and nose
pressed firm against the glass as she peers out at Whitney,
the cocker spaniel who became an outside dog
after knocking her over one too many times. My hands are tucked
under her armpits, and I’m using every ounce of my
three-and-a-half-year-old strength to make sure
she don’t teeter back onto her diaper-cushioned ****
The third, a candid from the family trip to Islamorada.
She and I are walking down the pier, on opposing sides
of Ganga, each holding one of her soft grandma hands.
She was our buffer for those eight days,
and years following the trip. We face the sunrise–
electric pink sky dotted with periwinkle wisps.
Later that day, my sister asked me to come look for seashells
with her; I told her I wished I had a little brother instead.
The final, from my college graduation last May.
My sister and I are laughing in the arboretum.
As excited as I was to never again sit in Hamilton 100
or bubble in a Scantron, I was already missing
eating pho and reading poems, making her matzo ball soup
when her throat hurt, and trekking to the taco truck at 1 am.
Neither of us knew then that I would have this job and this desk
with these four photos, and room for more.
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 3:35 PM UTC
I'm underneath an amber twilight
(and tasteful landscaping)
flirting with nostalgic anticipation
in room 1034
yet alone and content
I should photograph my life events
or the morning dew, still wet
with evaporating trepidation
which breaks into a cold sweat
when soothed by the resolution
of the seventh, to the third, to the root of the polyphony, harmonizing to the tune
of a Scantron being scribbled on,
or my choice
to ignore
everyone
(at least until finals are over)
May 23, 2017
May 23, 2017 at 2:40 PM UTC
Use No. 2 pencil only
Make DARK MARKS
Erase completely to change
Directions
FEED THIS CORPORATION
All rights subject
Customer service last
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 3:47 PM UTC
I color in between the lines
A darkened circle on a
Standardized scantron
Like the other numbers in the room
Wasting my life
With every stroke of breaking led
I color in a circle on a scantron
But I'm really coloring in
To America's capitalism
To the capitalism that acts as God-
The “Invisible Hand” made visible
By McDonalds and Burger King;
By my father's law firm
And the rest of the world
In coloring in this little circle
I'm coloring in myself
Marking myself
Right or wrong
Form 32A or Form 32B
98th percentile or 95th
And as I become applicant
Number 8574
I realize
I've become unable
To do anything
For the person
Beyond the number
Sep 22, 2013
Sep 22, 2013 at 5:00 PM UTC
the way my mind
interprets you makes
me want to, just for
the way you tell your
stories, or crack jokes.
you keep creeping into
the synapses firing like
an execution squadron
all around my brain, and
i can't shake these musings.
(a) maybe i want to prove
something to myself,
*(if you find out what, let
me know)* or (b) myself
to something, or not.
or maybe (c)
i'm just sad and alone,
and maybe i wish you'(d)
read this, and mayb(e) i
know you will.
trick question, option (f),
maybe i just want to know
what it would be like to
wake you from existence
with the slap to the face
or bucket of glacial water
my lips have always
been.
Dec 9, 2012
Dec 9, 2012 at 1:17 AM UTC
I got judged all this morning
On how well I could fill in bubbles
On a Scantron sheet.
Well,
My friend Johnny
Hasn't got any arms.
How do you suppose
We measure his intelligence
If he cannot fill in the bubbles?
Dec 11, 2013
Dec 11, 2013 at 10:37 AM UTC
I don't know how to start
just like I don't know how I feel.
But that's the paradox of the woman, right?
Will anyone ever understand my brain?
My neurons and brain stem and cerebellum,
left and right brain,
and all the lobes:
frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal.
Will anyone ever make sense of it all?
No.
No.
But you try.
You skirt across my hippocampus.
Try to pitch your tent there.
Try to make a life there.
Try to dig up and excavate the things that will make me yours.
You're coming close.
Because I believe in tests.
Yes I am one of them.
Yes I do it to you.
I thrive on tests.
I pull them out of my ear drums and fingernails
and from in between the splits of my teeth.
I pull out the ACT, the SAT
the LSAT, the MCAT,
the Bacceleureat.
Everything is a test.
Every answer
every question
every "please come get me"
and jack in a Styrofoam cup.
The way you walk the way you look at me when I breath is a plus or a minus or a smudge on a scantron sheet.
Three and a half hours later
you can breathe clean air again
and your mind can clear.
Holy smokes, yes, but there is is nothing holy about it.
We wont go ring shopping
we've already been house hunting
and we all know the only thing you want.
Wide open spaces and a bed in the center
and me.
Isn't that right?
Isn't
that
right?
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 8:21 PM UTC
"That's a good place,
Nobody bothers you there!"
Says the middle aged woman passing by as I sit secluded on a bench
Listening to the construction
Studying for a test using flash cards
I found on an online study sharing website
The irony is the kid who created them
Dates a boy I once kissed
The irony is she has bothered me
The irony of life is becoming too much
The irony is this morning as I left my house, I put 75 cents in my pocket
Not knowing why
I asked the man how much each scantron cost
A strange feeling came across me when he replied "21 cents", and I remembered the 3 quarters somewhere in my pocket.
Maybe I do have it all planned out
The ironic part, I wasn't planning this.
Sep 30, 2013
Sep 30, 2013 at 11:34 AM UTC
Elle sat on a scantron sheet;
She soon logically deduced
That this was not the proper place
To settle her caboose.
So she rose from her seat and,
Removing th'offending page,
Once again Elle sat herself
Inside the testing cage.
Sep 15, 2016
Sep 15, 2016 at 11:57 PM UTC
One part: gregarious graphite
Little black circles filled in carefully
like whimsical Will O’ Wisps
guiding the wonder-eyed wanderer,
Too late to see the blue’s turned black
‘Till toxicity taints our thoughts.
One part: creative deconstruction
of characteristically crucial creativity;
High school halls, sanitized and clean
devoid of imperfections we’ve come to fear
but absent also a sense of security, and
Absent also a sense of self.
Classroom currency was curiosity
And once was wonder here; now
Shy silhouettes sit in silent seats
a societal symptom of anorexic anxiety
the toll to thrive under the threat of Damocles:
That fear of failure, of cultural condemnation
Sacrilegious, the shattered system
But built upon a lie
A method meant for the masses
Yet you left us all behind.
Feb 18, 2019
Feb 18, 2019 at 2:30 PM UTC
No lovesick lad ever poured out his heart
To a Scantron®©™ card and its suave machine
Posed seductively in brushed aluminum
In a smoky corner of the faculty commons
Or with a thundering Number Two scribed
A manifesto that menaced the world
(But bubbled carefully within the squares)
And ground it through a Scantron®©™ 888
For indeed
Moses brought not Scantron®©™ down from Sinai
To teach God’s laws through an electric eye
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018 at 3:21 PM UTC
"Grab a scantron young man"
Take your future in hand
If you can't take the pain then you want make the pay
So take a scantron young man
For the times come at last
Your future has come and gone to pass
Jan 26, 2017
Jan 26, 2017 at 2:59 PM UTC
4 am
Stumbling through the dark
Wife needs the sleep
Youngest daughter’s crying
A blind diaper change
Warming a bottle and falling on the couch
Now 2-year-old’s crying on my hip
Burp then back to the cradle
Other daughter tucked in
Suit tie briefcase keys
45-minute commute
Bus duty for middle schooler
Fights broken up graffiti foiled
90 students in 6 periods
Grading lecturing consoling mediating
After-school program
Organizing monitoring guiding
Long drive back
Screaming kids tired wife
Laundry dinner dishes
Drive to part-time job
Inventory customers cleaning up-selling
Meeting with manager
Numbers are down you might get fired
Anxious anxious anxious anxious
Clock out drive to class
Parking running looking at watch
5 minutes late
Where were you prof says
The test has already started
Scantron answer sheet
Only a pen in my pocket
Unbelievable he says
With no pencil I have to fail you
Consider this a lesson
You need to grow up
This is the real world
Feb 11, 2020
Feb 11, 2020 at 10:28 AM UTC