Cauliflower’s been working out, ripped clothes and muscled arms urge everyone to dance. The blueberry girls and grape chicks with their leafy hair giggle and smile nearby. In walks Whole Grain Hipster, sporting a suit of bread and cereal like a seventies cartoon pimp, swaggering down the lunch line, healthy, cat, healthy, he nods over at the clique cliché of all the artsy individualistic girls: the lonely beet, eyes closed playing Dylan on her sad guitar, the bubbly pixie art grape, splashing paint so dreamy. Off in the corner by the water fountain, a cluster of grapes with black-eyed peas for eyes, fruit from the vineyard by the reactor, laugh through their carefully carved mouths while a lone mushroom makes his getaway on a hot rutabaga balloon made from some unfortunate member of misunderstood beet girl’s family, turned upside down, greens shredded and stalks used for lines. It’s a tough world for veggies and the fungus always wins but it’s healthy, man, so healthy.
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I administered our state social studies test to a group of sophomores and juniors in the cafeteria today and so I had a lot of time to study the posters in there. File this one under ekphrasis.
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
It is unfair, isn’t it?
I’m surreally impressed that you found poetry on freaky posters ignored by the students they are supposed to speak to.
Yeah it is weird. It’s like they’re designed to appeal to the designers’ youth.
Well, I can see why the beet’s misunderstood. My kids are taking the STAAR test, too. Bless you!
Yeah, we’ve got STAAR and the TAKS for the 10th and 11th graders. It’s been an interesting week.
I love state testing. Hours of time to write!
It used to be that way but now Texas insists on “active monitoring” which means if we’re reading, writing, grading, planning or anything of the sort we can be sanctioned and lose our licenses. It’s turned it into the most painfully boring week imaginable.