A 10th Grade Reading List for Times Like These

do you have memories like mine, of stickered paperbacks and pencil-smudged desks—

the flies’ lazy laps overhead, the dry erase fumes and overcooked body spray? Outside, the

street noise, like mortgages or old age, is far away from essays and lunch trays and football

games and dress codes. Now listen up: Allegory. Foreshadowing. Irony. Theme. In a quality

tale, everything has a symbol. (Are you taking notes?) A fireman, a cake, a pilgrim, a paperweight,

a mockingbird, any bird. Glasses, skulls, heads on sticks, #42. Today nothing adds up. What would

u give for the answer—easy to spot, like red hunting hats or scarlet letters or blue eyes? Vocab quiz:

five ways to describe a dock light: emerald, jade, viridian, lime, chartreuse. Why would you need these

they carried truths, along with imperfections, histories, warnings. So when you’re getting torn

apart (hang the witch/burn the pages/send them back/lock them up/distrust the

medicine/white noise & white houses/red hats & red plagues), remember the night still

sings with voices. Changing the ending. Do you have memories like mine, of an eager, limitless

world, of it stretching before you? I’m taking a breath.         I’m ready to