The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary Page 2
clapped a welcome.
Isn’t it funny? The one thing
I’m looking forward to
about fifth grade
is how it ends.
September 5
PERCUSSION POEM
Ben Kidwell
Every time
I try to write a poem,
the pencil goes
scritch a scratch.
My pencils
tick a tack
drumbeats
on my desk.
My feet boom
badoom the floor
like a heartbeat
always moving.
My words
take up a rhythm
like the wind
blowing outside.
Scritch a scratch
Tick a tack
Boom badoom
Outside outside
How can I write
when everything around
makes an interesting
sound?
September 8
PING-PONG RIFF
Jason Chen
I have to write a poem for a class project?
My brain bounces around for ideas,
but it’s not like a Ping-Pong ball,
going back and forth in straight lines.
(Not all Asians play Ping-Pong.
I play football, and also
saxophone.) A poem?
My brain bounces back to summer,
hurling insults during Shakespeare camp.
Thou deboshed fish!
How couldst thou require our class
to compose verses every quarter?
Didst thou say every quarter?
My brain bounces from Shakespearean curses
to quarter notes, filling up a page of sheet music.
Soon, I’m bebopping a jazz rhythm.
Words begin to flow from my pencil
like notes from a saxophone.
Finally, my brain starts riffing.
September 9
EVERY MORNING
Norah Hassan
Every morning I braid my hair for school.
Sometimes I use the lemon oil my sister gave me.
I rub a drop into my hair.
The smell reminds me of when I was little,
the lemon tree in my grandfather’s courtyard.
I call him Jaddi. He is not Grandpa.
Every morning I walk to school.
There is a path through the woods.
I follow Ben and his father.
They look for mushrooms and insects
while I gaze up at the trees, so tall.
There are no trees like this
where I come from, Jerusalem,
but there are also no gold autumn leaves,
no bare branches sprouting in spring.
If they demolish our school,
I hope they leave these trees alone.
I love how cool their shade feels
even though the days are hot.
Every morning, Ms. Hill tells us
we must write in our journals.
In June we will have a record
of our fifth-grade year
to put inside the school time capsule.
Before I write a poem, I talk to myself in Arabic.
In Arabic, the words sound like a river
flowing over rocks, jagged and smooth.
I hear Jaddi’s voice.
English isn’t good enough for telling poems.
It sounds like knives and forks
clanking in a drawer.
September 10
MY TEACHER
Tyler La Roche
Everything’s bigger in Texas.
That’s what they say where I’m from,
but folks in the Lone Star State
never seen Ms. Hill.
She should’ve been called Ms. Mountain.
Just about the tallest teacher I ever met.
Her hair isn’t dull gray
but silvery, and shiny as the trumpet
I’ve been bugging my mom about.
Kids say Ms. Hill’s strict, scolds the girls
in our class who can’t stay friends
more than two days in a row,
not like me and Mark.
My first day at Emerson Elementary,
Ms. Hill asked Mark to be my buddy.
How’d Ms. Hill know we’d be friends?
Does she have a Magic 8 Ball hidden
behind that old black-and-white picture—
our teacher, younger than my mom,
scarf wrapped around her hair,
marching in a big parade?
Kids say Ms. Hill is going to retire.
If the school goes down,
she’ll go down with it.
But having her for my fifth-grade teacher
almost makes me glad
my family moved north.
September 11
I KNOW THIS ONE
Rajesh Rao
I raise my hand.
I say, “Ooh! Ooh!
I know this one.”
I stand up, too.
I wave and groan.
I stomp my feet.
She tells me to
please take my seat.
My arm is tired.
Please call on me!
I want to speak.
Why can’t she see?
She’s giving someone
else a chance.
I wasted my
right-answer dance.
September 15
SELF-PORTRAIT
Rennie Rawlins
At home, my mom says
I could argue a tiger out of its own stripes.
I act like I’m a brave tiger
for my little sister Phoenix when I walk her
to first grade every morning.
But as soon as I say goodbye
I’m more like a rabbit, small and quiet,
wanting to blend in.
Phoenix is real shy. She won’t like it
if they sell our elementary and middle school.
What if we get split up next year?
She’ll have no sister Rennie to walk with.
I hear everyone complaining
about plans to tear down Emerson,
but nobody’s doing a thing about it.
Except George.
He’s going to change things up,
run for student council
and save our school.
I’m going to tell George
he needs a vice president
and I volunteer.
I’m done being a rabbit.
I will stand up tall and argue.
I will roar like a tiger until someone
hears what I have to say.
September 16
MY NAME
Sydney Costley
I used to like my name,
until second grade,
when we moved to this school.
Jason Chen thought it was funny
to call me Sydney Kidney
and my twin Sloane the Clone.
I used to like how our names
aren’t too fancy.
But my best friend
is Rachel Chieko Stein,
and her name is really pretty.
I used to like how my name
has so many letter Ys
because my dad said
my name made me “wise.”
But now I am older.
So many things are changing,
I think I am full of whys instead…
like why does the Board of Ed
want to close Emerson?
Why do they want to split up our class?
And why does everyone but me
want to spend three more years
going to this school?
September 17
TWO HAIKU
Newt Mathews
Poems that have rules.
Counting word beats in three lines
<
br /> makes sense to my brain.
Little white frogs live
along our school’s back brick wall.
Look inside my hand!
September 18
TOP TEN THINGS THAT STINK WHEN YOUR FATHER DIES
Mark Fernandez
1. You can’t sleep.
2. You watch late-night TV.
3. You start acting like a talk-show host.
4. Everyone but the new kid thinks you’re weird.
5. They all ignore you.
6. There’s no one to hang around with, so you miss your dad.
7. The moms in your neighborhood feel bad for you.
8. They make their kids invite you places.
9. You think you have friends.
10. You don’t.
September 19
AT THE MOVIES
Shoshanna Berg
My mother asked me to be nice to Mark,
invite him to the movies with a friend.
She said, “No one will see you in the dark,
and if they do, the world’s not going to end!”
My mother doesn’t know that Hannah Wiles
judges everything I do and say.
She tells me who’s my friend and what’s in style,
and when we’re out at recess what we’ll play.
So I took Gaby with me to make sure
no one would say I asked Mark on a date.
They ate my popcorn. I went to buy more,
and there was Hannah, outside Theater 8.
I hid inside the bathroom for an hour.
I wish I could break free from Hannah’s power.
22 Septiembre
“EL PALOMITO”
Gaby Vargas
Espero el viernes la semana entera.
¡La clase de música!
Cuando canto, muestro cómo me siento
alegre, triste.
Cuando canto, mis palabras
suenan claras, fuertes.
Pero cuando hablo inglés,
me enredo. Intento decirle a Shoshanna,
“Mark es cómico, siempre está bromeando,
pero sus ojos marrón son tristes
y esconden cosas que no quiere decir.”
Intento escribir primero las palabras
¡pero escribir en inglés es aun más difícil!
Buscar palabras
en mi diccionario inglés-español
toma demasiado tiempo.
No encuentro las palabras correctas
para decirle a Mark, “Siento mucho lo de tu papá.”
Así que le enseño a tocar “El Palomito,”
una canción triste de mi país,
yo cantando y Mark con su guitarra.
September 22
“EL PALOMITO”
Translated by Gaby Vargas and Mark Fernandez
I wait all the week for Friday,
the class of music!
When I sing, I show how I feel
happy, sad.
When I sing, my words
sound clear and strong.
But when I talk English
I make a mistake.
I want to tell to Shoshanna,
“Mark is funny, he always jokes,
but his brown eyes
cover things he don’t say.”
I intend to write the words first,
but to write in English is more difficult!
To look for words
in my English and Spanish dictionary
is too much time.
I don’t find correct words
to say to Mark, “I am sorry for your father.”
So I teach to him to play “El Palomito,”
a sad song of my country.
I sing and Mark plays his guitar.
September 23
CHANGES
George Furst
It’s strange how things change
but also kind of stay the same.
I’m still my parents’ favorite (only) kid,
and we’re still a family, even though
my dad has his own apartment.
I still ride the school bus every day.
We take the same route, but the horse farm
we used to pass in first grade
is an apartment building now.
I know there must be other kids like me
at our school, who need a place
that never changes. Because parents split up,
best friends move to a big house across town
and you never hear from them again,
but Emerson Elementary is always here.
It drips and leaks. The gym floor is cracked.
The walls could use some paint,
but all our school needs is a little fixing up.
Change is happening all around Emerson.
That’s why we have to show Mrs. Stiffler
and the Board of Ed it wouldn’t take much
to keep our school from changing.
Just like I have to show my father
it wouldn’t take much
to put our family back together.
September 24
WRITING TIME
Katie McCain
It’s writing time again?
Some mornings
my words are clumsy.
They bump into each other.
Smoosh
boosh
BAM!
They’ve got as much rhythm
as an octopus
doing the chicken dance.
Some mornings
after we say the Pledge,
my words are still
crawling out of bed.
They’ve got
fuzzy slippers on.
They haven’t
brushed their teeth.
P.U.
This poem stinks.
September 26
LUCKY HAT
Ben Kidwell
September 29
MY TWIN
Sloane Costley
No matter how many times I tell my sister
appearances MATTER,
she still dresses like some
Olympic soccer coach
might call her any second
so she’d better be ready to play NOW.
Suddenly, it’s a miracle!
Sydney’s paying attention,
asking me which teachers are stylish.
The young ones, duh!
No offense, Ms. Hill,
but I have seen the old photo
on your desk, and even when
you were young in the 1970s
that paisley scarf you wore
wasn’t exactly fashionable.
Last week, Sydney asked our mom
to take her to the mall.
Gasp! Have all my fashion lectures,
the pictures from Vogue
I taped on our bedroom wall,
finally gotten through to her?
There is a chance we might be popular
if we dress cool and go to a new middle school
(where no one calls me Sloane the Clone).
When Sydney came home from shopping,
I inspected her bags.
A denim skirt, purple tie-dyed T-shirt,
and cute navy blue Vans. Wow.
“Well?” Sydney said
when she tried on her outfit for me.
“Finally,” I said, “you look like a girl.”
September 30
PICTURE DAY
Sydney Costley
This is why I don’t like skirts.
It feels weird when I walk.
These shoes hurt my feet.
I wanted to look pretty. But I’m not.
I thought a purple shirt would be okay,
but I look like an exploding grape soda
or a purple blob,
and it’s not even Halloween yet.
Why did I try to be
not me
on Picture Day?
; October 1
PICTURE DAY
Jason Chen
When I leave the house
my hair is gelled,
my shirt is pressed,
my teeth are brushed,
my mom’s impressed.
I look so nice
I want to spew
my Cheerios
on someone’s shoe.
When it’s time for pictures
my hair’s in spikes,
my shirt’s all loose,
my teeth are pink
from drinking juice.
I look so bad
I want to hurl
my lunch upon
some dressed-up girl.
October 2
POSTERS
George Furst
Yesterday
my father came home
to help me and my mom
make election posters.
They say
“Make Furst Your First Choice”
and “SOS—Save Our School.”
After dinner, we sat
at the kitchen table
like we used to.
My mom drew the letters
with blue marker.
My dad added red glitter.
I stuck pictures of my face
inside the big letter O.
I used so much glue,
I thought we’d be stuck
at that table
forever.
October 3
ELECTION DAY
Norah Hassan
Everyone is excited!
Listen carefully while Ms. Hill explains how we
Elect our student council.
Candidates must sign up by Friday. George wants me
To run for secretary.
I can help him save our school because I am
Organized and
Neat.
Does one election make me feel like
A real American?
Yes!
October 6
ODE TO MY GRANDPA
Edgar Lee Jones
He moves real slow,
like one of those giant
hundred-year-old
tortoises at the zoo.