Convocation by Tom Meyer This is 9th grade. We will write every day. We will read so much. Do cool things. Every day. (Emphasize the every... No crosswords. No matching. No fill-in-the blank. Just writing. Reading. A lot.) We are the dumb kids, you know. (Was that Jason or John or James?) Write me a letter about what you need to learn . (This is not hard. They know what they need. This is where I’m meant to be.) Donald wants an A. The person who want me to achieve my grade is my friend, Edgar Gomez . Give him a call with how I doing: 347-0597 or -0599. (Donald’s Punjabi grandparents don’t speak school or English. Don’t know that Donald aced his Magic Johnson newspaper analysis portfolio project.) Someone is dead on the tennis court (What? What? What the fuck?); Donald’s classmate, Sonny’s not here today. Not knocking rhythms on the metal walls or the heater (Fine. Use the heater as your desk); Sonny’s sister lay on the tennis court by the science lab. Sonny’s sister and a flappy yellow plastic ribbon wrapped around an early morning present. Sonny’s classmate, Jason, presses down his number 2 pencil forever tattooing R.I.P. through his daily g et-some-paper-if-you-need it. Jason’s classmate, Olivia’s murmur, sends ripples on our classroom pond. Why did she suicide? Why? Does she hate us? No - it’s did she hate us? Yeah. Did. Did she hate us? Did she hate this place? Hate here? She wuz from Oregon, right?
HVWP COMMONPLACE 25
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