3 My Secret Poetry Writing System

3 My Secret Poetry Writing System The next morning, right after we pledged the allegiance, an announcement came over the loudspeaker: "Miss Banks, please send A.J. to Ms. Coco's office." "Oooooh!" everybody ooooohed.

"A.J. is in trouble!" said Ryan. I knew I wasn't in trouble. When you get sent to the principal's office, you know you're in trouble. You're not in trouble when you get sent to the gifted and talented teacher's office. I walked a million hundred miles to see Ms. Coco. I opened her door, but she wasn't there. I looked around. There were signs on the wall with words like THINK! CREATE! INVENT! and pictures of famous geniuses like Albert Einstein, the Wright brothers, and the Beatles. I remembered how I was chosen to be in the gifted and talented program in the first place. It was back in second grade. Ms. Coco had us write poems then too. She told us our poems didn't have to rhyme, and they didn't have to make sense. They just had to paint a word picture, whatever that means. So I figured out that you could put a bunch of words in any order and call it a poem. That gave me the greatest idea in the history of the world! I took a stack of flash cards that we use to practice spelling words and threw them up in the air. When they landed on the floor, I just picked up a bunch of them and wrote down the words....

Underground idea still afraid, Bright holiday promise, grandfather curious, Pretty puddles discovered seem asleep, Think lucky picnic, pretend deep secret.

It didn't rhyme. It didn't even make any sense. But it sounded like a real poem. That's when I realized that any dumbhead can write poetry. It was so easy! What a scam!* I never told anybody about my secret poetry writing system. But when Ms. Coco saw my poem in second grade, she loved it. She decided that I was a genius. And that's how I ended up in the gifted and talented program. Back then, I wrote a bunch of fake poems with my secret poetry writing system. In fact, I sold some of them to kids who couldn't write poems on their own. I was thinking about all this stuff when the door opened. "Sorry I'm late," Ms. Coco said. "I had to fix my hair." "Why, was it broken?" I asked. Ms. Coco didn't laugh at my little joke. She had on a sad face. I knew something was wrong. She told me to sit down. "I'm disappointed in you, A.J.," she told me. "Why? What did I do?" I asked. "Roses are red, violets are purple?" she said. "When I get gas, I have to burple?"

"Was my poem too short or something?" I asked. "I can make it longer if you want me to." Ms. Coco sighed and reached into her desk drawer. She pulled out a piece of paper. I recognized it. It was one of my fake poems I wrote in second grade by throwing flash cards up in the air.... Grateful yearning urges hollow wisdom. Childlike effort appears alongside guarded patience. Protest fierce passion, including shiny branches. Foolish dreams drift beyond balanced flight. "I saved this poem you wrote back in second grade," Ms. Coco told me after she read it. "It moved me to tears! In all my years of teaching, I never had a student with so much talent and emotion." That's when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened. Ms. Coco started crying! "I never thought someone so young could write such brilliant poetry," she blubbered, wiping her eyes with a tissue. "But now, you're just

writing silly childish poems that rhyme 'purple' with 'burple.' What happened to you, A.J.?" I wanted her to stop crying. I also wanted a lifetime supply of Zip-Zap candy bars. "I can do better," I told Ms. Coco. "Give me another chance." "I know you can, A.J.," she said, getting a yellow writing pad and a pen out of her desk. "I'm going to leave you alone for a few minutes so you