poem by a rebellious 10-year-old

I had various jobs while writing my dissertation. While in Chicago there was always some teaching available, and then I had my sportswriting job for a couple of years. But I also left Chicago twice during the dissertation years for personal reasons.

In one of those other locations, I had a job for awhile correcting essays on standardized tests. These tests were rating the performance of schools, not of individuals. In order to keep them standardized, there was a strict rubric we had to apply, and anything far out of the ordinary was bound to get either a low score or an “off topic” score.

My favorite “off topic” response came from a 10-year-old boy. (I hope he didn’t just copy any of this from some pop culture source unknown to me, but none of my fellow judges knew of such a source either.)

The topic was to write some essay on a banal topic. Let’s say, “what I did on my summer vacation.” In response, the boy wrote merely as follows. I don’t remember the exact nouns used in the first ten or so lines, but do remember the final line verbatim.

That goose is going to die.
That dog is going to die.
That snake is going to die.
That sheep is going to die.
That cow is going to die.
That pig is going to die.
That cat is going to die.
That child is going to die.
That rat is going to die.
That duck is going to die.
The tree is on fire.

There was a young published poet in the group who vehemently insisted on giving this response top marks. If we were giving individual scores that would have had any consequence, I’d have joined that fight as well. But we were only giving blanket marks to schools, so this one got the standard “off topic” score.