Test Day (Monday Poem)

by Kathi Appelt

 

 

It's never about the things I know:

 

    Where the old turtle hid her eggs

    How many homeruns my brother hit last season

    My mom's favorite colors -- violet and pink

    That chocolate chip cookies need vanilla

    The year my grandfather fought in a war

    The year he didn't come back

    That my great-great-great-aunt learned to drive when she was 68

    What time the moon rose last night

    And what time it set this morniing

    How the thunder scares my ginger-striped cat

    Why the neighbor's hound howls at stars

    Where the grackle built her nest

    What to put in my dad's cup of coffee . . . .

 

            It's never about the things I know.

 

 

from Falling Down the Page

edited by Georgia Heard

Roaring Brook Press, 2009  

 

Creativity (Monday Poem)

by Eileen Spinelli

 

 

An artist takes:

 

colored pencil

piece of yarn

wooden slat from 

some old barn

sidewalk chalk

or spool of wire

can of paint 

or junkyard tire

twig or twine

or river rock

seed or seashell

woolen sock

bar of soap

or paper heart

and turns it

happily

to art.

 

Perhaps you have:

a shard of plate

a hinge from someone's

garden gate

a scrap of quilt

or rusty screw . . . .

 

then you can be 

an artist too.

 

 

from Falling Down the Page

edited by Georgia Heard

Roaring Brook Press, 2009  

 

In My Hands (Monday Poem)

 by Marilyn Singer

 

 

I like to hold in my hand

    a baseball,

    a shell,

    a fistful of sand,

    a feather,

    a letter,

    a red rubber band.

Things that tickle,

Things that trickle.

Things to snap and toss and fold

    or just hold.

 

 

from Falling Down the Page

edited by Georgia Heard

Roaring Brook Press, 2009  

 

 

 

Just Look! (Monday Poem)

by Valiska Gregory

 

 

A cardinal in red velvet,

two doves in stylish gray,

four sparrows dressed in tattered brown,

a loud-mouth bully of a jay,

 

a foxy squirrel in brown-gold fut,

a chipmunk with cheeks bulged fat,

and in the maple tree a crow

as calm as a monk in black,

 

a nuthatch skittering down the trunk,

and gossiping grackles below ---

we see their trick-track twiggy feet

write messages in snow.

 

Our gifts of thistle, millet, seed,

seem small under endless sky,

but watching them feast, our hearts are full,

as if we too might fly,

 

 

from Falling Down the Page

edited by Georgia Heard

Roaring Brook Press, 2009  

 

Nineties (Monday Poem)

 by Angela Johnson

 

 

Had to leave the South

to hear somebody call me a nigger

for the first time.

Had to have my head 

out the window in

a west side neighborhood

in Cleveland

to hear a girl about my age

scream that knifing word

at my mama's car.

Had to make Mama stop

so I could look at the

face of somebody who

dressed just like me

and probably

wanted what I did

from the world,

bu would never live in

mine.

 

 

from The Other Side: Shorter Poems

by Angela Johnson

Orchard Books, 1998  

 

Counters (Monday Poem)

 by Angela Johnson

 

 

My Uncle Fred has a slash

across his face from

some redneck

trying to

stop him from ordering

a lemonade from a lunch counter

in Montgomery.

When the weather changes, it

aches him, he says,

but smiles when

he says it, whenever he says it.

All my mama could remember

was how Grandmama had

screamed and 

talked about 

leaving the South.

 

All I can think is

how terrible it was

and how beautiful

it made him.

 

 

from The Other Side: Shorter Poems

by Angela Johnson

Orchard Books, 1998  

 

Crazy (Monday Poem)

 by Angela Johnson

 

 

You'd have to be 

crazy

to want to live

your life in

a place like Shorter, Alabama.

The heat,

the red ants, and 

twenty miles to 

any mall.

You'd have to be crazy

to want to live

in a place where

every other person is

related to you

and thinks they know

everything about your

life.

 

You'd have to be crazy

to want to wake

up every morning to sweet

magnolia and moist red

dirt.

You'd have to be 

crazy.

 

 

from The Other Side: Shorter Poems

by Angela Johnson

Orchard Books, 1998