Richard Meier composed this cento using lines written by his 5th grade students in Mr. Green's, Ms Mitchell's, Mr. Dunlap's, and Mr. Kimbrough's classes at Tarkington Elementary.
A cento is a form of poetry that means "stiched together." In a cento, lines may be borrowed from different sources. Many centos are 100 lines long!
Tarkington Cento
I wish I was happy but never mind.
Today the sons of liberty
will take down the sun,
taking the stars from the sky,
because my heart doesn't have a
normal life.
It's not wrong.
Why do we talk?
Why don't we?
So I can say ahooo!!!!!!
My gravest moment was when I had my baby.
Why is the sky blue
to no one, I don’t want
a rose
because
in my head there’s animals studying
a windy day,
the sky, and one girl that
is shy in the
nature and everything.
When a bird flies it is like
climbing the trees while
a student said: The gravest moment was
always eating little white mice
to wake my Mom.
Yesterday I was a table,
not the flower bent to stand up.
You need to see them close because
I feel like a soldier in
tomorrow. I will be one butterfly
heading the ball into the net.
My teacher said,
I remember
to do nothing
chopping down a tree
standing tall, like the world.
Last night I dreamt just seeing black
because I got a spankin’ for throwin’ eggs at a house.
English is fun to learn. Cat
don’t like that little mouse.
Even hate has more joy at times
and I sing a song. “He so lonely.”
When a man drowned in me,
inside of me I see light
at schools or at the table at home.
And there’s a whole
girl, not with a lot of energy, but
no church bells, no skipping butterflies.
For this, only for this
I don’t feel
all day without even stopping,
because it’s sweet,
forest pouring with rain, and I’m looking
around Buzzing and a bird
from the
Alphabet Train of Thought
Professors might seem good but you never know
the stars and the moon.
Everyone has the same amount of
I ask myself. Why do some girls like to go to the. . .
Because, the neighbor is screaming,
an evil bunny coming to me. I remember
because life is just plain and
amazing things happening
pulling me like power. The ground
with nothing but a tree keeping me company,
laughing at me, even my dog laugh at me
like a star floating.
Take off all your nerves and dance
a big mouth.
And a flower said
I used to think that life was
exclamatory sentences that
is free and there are oceans
zoning out the ring
of the night.
But I don’t feel like a teacher
I don’t feel like a
truth and the whole truth.
Tomorrow everything will be the opposite.
My loneliness is nothing to be spoken
or Ed eating jawbreakers
floating in the ocean.
Could I float around the room
with my dog barking
my alarm going beep beep beep?
Why is our teacher teaching us this
around and around and books about
people catching the
donuts looking like a clock?
Them are all the things I don’t feel.
No one else can change that
time when you need something when you need a watch to tell its time.
When the trees lose their color and their leaves,
to my dog barking in my backyard
I’m at the beach.
Name with alphabet soup
at 3:00 a.m. when
I don’t feel like myself.
I is for the igloos in Antarctica.
But it ended.
Dancer dancing around the stage,
Zappato is a shoe in Spanish.
Why does a president make wars?
Because the girls jumped rope
first day of spring.
This poem was read today during the sold out Hands on Stanzas Reading at The Old Town School of Folk Music by Tarkington's poet in residence Richard Meier. Poets in residence Eric Elshtain, Cassie Sparkman, Larry O. Dean and avery r. young also read, along with students students Cruz Nunez (Tarkington), Kristin Kawazoye (Galileo), Arica Heyd (Ebinger), Isabel Rios (Shields), and Sernetra Scott (Hay).
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