“Class, as of right now, you are in the presence of a literary genius”, Ms. Thomas, the sophomore English teacher at Millard Fillmore High School, announced to her pupils of Room 213. “This morning, I found the most brilliant piece of student poetry I have read, no, experienced in years. It’s brilliant, it’s outstanding it’s brimming with glory!”

“You, with the red hair, you’ve slept through every lesson this year, but I want you to be awake for this moment in history,” Ms. Thomas shouted across the room. The carrot-top student stirred a little and slowly regained consciousness. “Now, I’ve made copies for all of you, and we’re going to spend the next two class days examining this piece of poetry. But before I pass them out, I’d like the writer to come forward. I found this poem on my desk this morning without a name. Your poem is four weeks late; I assigned this poetry assignment a month ago, but I will make an exception for this genius piece of poetry. It is simply a cut above anything I’ve ever read by a student. Don’t be shy, who was it?”

Ms. Thomas’s eyes gazed across a silent classroom. Her students seemed stunned, and even Carrot-Top was awake. There were no hands shooting into the air, no grunts, no movement at all.

“No one wants to confess? Well, that’s alright, you can be silent now, my little prodigy, but I think once you hear your peers’ glorifying comments you’ll want to admit it’s yours.” Ms. Thomas walked down each of the rows of desks and placed a copy of the poem in front of each student. She walked back to the front of the classroom and turned around to face her students.

“Well? Does anyone want to read it out loud?” She eagerly looked around the classroom. Virginia Hopewell, the sophomore class’s valedictorian, shot her arm up, and waved her hand anxiously. “Would anyone else like to read for a change?” Ms. Thomas said, exasperated, as the girl smiled, almost ready to bounce out of her seat. “Well, go ahead, Virginia.”

“A poem,” Virginia read, as her eyes glanced over the title, “How do I read this, Ms. Thomas?”
“Maybe we should all just look at the poem…” Ms. Thomas suggested. The students all turned their attention to the sheet of paper on their desk. The sheet read:

a poem:

SHRJKAHSHJKshffffffffffkj2344444#$$$$$$$$$$$$$sjfklsj

Once again, the classroom was overcome by silence. Ms. Thomas looked around at the students, waiting for a reaction.

Carrot-Top spoke, without raising his hand, “I don’t get it. It’s just a bunch of jibberish.”

Caroline Green, in the seat ahead of her red-headed classmate, turned around to glare at him, “I agree with Ms. Thomas. I think it’s brilliant,” she said as she turned back around to smile at her teacher. “It’s not just a bunch of jibberish. I think it’s the writer’s feelings about society, and the way it has affected their life at home, and the expectations the writer has to cope with as a result. I also think that anyone who thinks this poem is jibberish obviously doesn’t know what poetry is, especially after, say, that someone writes a poem about sleeping through The Passion of the Christ,” Caroline snorted as she glanced back at Carrot-Top.

“Caroline,” Ms. Thomas interrupted, “I think you’re on the right track. I had the same feeling when I read it for the first time. Does anyone else have anything to say? Perhaps on the structure of this poem?”

“I love the way the writer placed the ‘at’ symbols around all of the dollar signs, and just one number sign, and then used two more number signs after the second ‘at’ symbol. I think this was the writer’s way of showing that money issues were a part of society’s harsh expectations.”

“Excellent!” Ms. Thomas exclaimed. Before she could bring up her theory on the writer’s pain throughout childhood expressed in the 23 that came before the string of 4’s, she was cut off by a frenzy of student reactions:

“The way the writer started out with letters at the end, and ended with letters in the end, it’s fantastic! It shows how the writer’s life is coming in full circle as he begins to understand the circumstances around him or her.”

“The title may just be the most fabulous part of the poem! The fact that the title is two coherent words, and then the poem itself is just a labyrinth of letters, symbols, and numbers is just fascinating! It’s so deep!”

“I just noticed, as I read it for the fourth time, that the writer uses only letters in the middle row in the keyboard. This must show the writer’s feelings about where he or she falls in life. He or she is always in the middle, torn by two conflicting emotions. And then he or she jumps to the top of the keyboard, which must show a time where they decided to go to one side, which obviously caused a lot of turmoil because they jump back and forth between numbers and symbols, and to conclude, the writer falls back to the letters, in the middle of the keyboard. Only the second time the writer uses letters, they’re not capitalized, so this probably means that the writer has learned to cope with this conflict. I’ve never seen so much thought put into a poem.”

Ms. Thomas rushed over to the phone next to the door. “I’m going to call Mr. Wilson; the principal should see what Millard Fillmore High School is capable of! He’ll be thrilled! And after that, I should probably notify the superintendent, and he can send it on to a publisher, or maybe send it to the National Outstanding Student Poetry in the 21st Century Competition. We have a blue ribbon in our hands!”

The classroom filled with noise as the excited students began to buzz with excitement, so much so that no one heard Carrot-Top grumble from the back of the room, “We still don’t even know who wrote the poem!”

Ms. Thomas picked up the phone and began to dial the Main Office’s number, as she was abruptly hit by the door as it swung open.

“OUCH!” Ms. Thomas yelped as she dropped the phone, “Max Alexander, you’re late for the seventh time this month! Do you have a pass?” Her face grew red as she tried to regain her posture.

“Afraid not,” Max replied, as he began to saunter off to his seat.

“Hold on, take a copy of this poem, we’re going to be analyzing it for the rest of this class and tomorrow’s as well. Take a good look at it, and I want to hear what you think about it when I get off the phone with the principal. Soak in this work of genius while you can, one of your classmates wrote this gem!”

Max took the poem from Ms. Thomas and began to laugh. Virginia, insulted by his lack of compassion, retorted, “Shut up, what gives you the right to laugh about poetry? You didn’t even complete this assignment.” Max began to laugh even harder.

“No, you guys don’t understand, I wrote this two days ago,” Max laughed. The entire class stopped talking and turned to look at Max. “Ms. Thomas had been getting on my case for weeks about not handing this in, so I went down to the computer lab the other day, sat on the keyboard, printed this out, and left it on Ms. Thomas’s desk this morning. I had to pay for a new keyboard after I squashed it, but it was hilarious, man.”

No one said anything until Ms. Thomas picked up the phone, still hanging from the receiver and spoke into it, “Hold on, I’ll have to call you back.” She set the phone down and stared up at Max, anger in her eyes, and pointed her index finger in his face. “You didn’t write this! This is far above your level of writing!”

“I hate to break this to you, Ms. Thomas, but I wrote… well, didn’t really write, I ‘sat’ that poem. You can even ask the computer lab lady about the keyboard I broke. She was really mad. It really doesn’t mean anything; I just thought it would be a good joke. Why, what did you guys think it meant?”