Two Poems
General Education Requirements
Pearls melt when placed in vinegar. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. The fifth mile of
every highway must be straight in case of a major war. If you lived in a game show, the previous
answers would all be unnecessary. Their is four error in this sentence. Can you find them?
Write a four page essay which evaluates the accuracy of the following question: “What’s that
smell?” Nothing rhymes with month, orange, purple, and silver. No it doesn’t.
OptimismA poem has to offer promise. Even severed heads dream a little. Even the bronze butterfly will
wake from its dark branch. Keep that chin up. For every suicide, there are at least a hundred
births, and I admit I love my children, who, aside from looking so beautiful in photos, have
heads that smell like water used to smell a thousand years ago. I love how you can learn things
from a poem, things even the poet himself hasn’t learned. Enough darkness, I say. Remember
that the Sumatran Titanum Arum plant grows the largest flower in the world, yet it has the aroma
of decaying flesh. You take the good with the bad. And if grass is the uncut hair of graves, add
water and sun and what you have is something less trite than optimism, yet more honest than
cynicism. I have not wasted my life. Not yet.