After studying for the GRE for the last few days I dug this one up from a few years ago.
On Assessments
We are the children
Of the second pencil
Numbered two
Writing, lost
In empty bubbles
Half filled squares
I am the daughter of a machine
Pushing on and onward
My opinions are well calibrated
To fit jigsaw into options
A, B, C or D
I have learned the world right
And wrong, lost years to
Perfecting the imperfect
Art of guessing
Forgetting the moment they re
Collect to grade.
But what am I if not
A machine like the father?
My father, the man who could love
Only progress, only result could
Never see the animatronic offspring
Bred in wire-y, electrified puss
I have always known how to hold a pencil.
Bubble my name in backwards.
One more notch downward each year.
Oh glory to be 7, then 8… finally 12
How could it ever end?
That we were made so perfectly,
Trained so flawlessly
Dumbed so perminately
For the impossible test…
A test of all others
To issue a number of our worth
Arbitrary.
Adjacent to my age
on a sheet somewhere
On file. Flawed and raped I am
Evaluated on a perfectly flat piece of paper…
Too temper mental to be folded.
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