What do we know about Lola?

Lola’s lost her rational numbers worksheet. She’s got the whole school bus looking for it —when Lola says to do something, it’s like she’s an orchestra conductor and we all just fall in line.

“For God’s sake, people, it was here a second ago. Look a little harder.” Lola’s golden ponytail flops side to side as she paces the aisle. She taps Billy Maguire on the top of his head. “What? You give up already?”

Billy Maguire is the goon of Darby Junior High. He’s easily a head taller than me. I stand up and start toward them; sometimes it’s no fun being Lola’s twin brother. My stomach’s cramping into a raisin, but then I see Maguire rip a sheet out of his spiral notebook.

“I copied mine for you,” he says.

Lola combs over Maguire’s sheet as if she’s grading it or might even reject it.

What does the simile tell us about the narrator of this poem by Maya Angelou?

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

What is the theme of this poem by Galway Kinnell? (A sow is a femaile pig)

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

In this excerpt of a story by Yoko Morgenstern, what can you infer about Nina, based on the last paragraph?

In the hall, Nina finds Chloe sitting on a young man’s lap, still in her Rio dress. A large, rugged hand is petting her belly.

“Oh, hey,” she says, looking at Nina, labouring to smile.

Yes, Nina knows this. If only this wasn’t two hours away from home, she’d let her go with him. But she can’t. She wants to go back home. “Er—I’m ready to go.”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Hey,” a calm, deep voice pops up from behind Nina. She turns around. There stands the comedian. She sees him better now that he’s without his makeup. Well into his thirties, his hair a straight dark blond, his eyes green, his lips thin. “If you need a ride, I could take you.”

What do you know about the narrator of this poem by Craig Santos Perez

nālani and

i walk

to our

small community

garden plot

in mānoa —

the seed

packets in

my pocket

sound like

a baby’s

toy rattle —

when do

they spray

glyphosate along

the sidewalks?

from kunia

to waimea,

fifty thousand

acres of

gmo fields —

how will

open air

pesticide drift

affect our

unborn daughter,

whose nerve

endings are

just beginning

to root? —

we plant

seeds in

rows, soil

gathers under

our fingernails —

syngenta, dupont,

dow, pioneer,

basf, monsanto

$240 million

seed sector —

corn for

cattle feed

and syrup —

runoff turns

[our] streams

red — poisons

lo‘i — 50,000

heart sea

urchins die off —

what will

our daughter

be able

to plant

in this

paradise of

fugitive dust —

What is one theme of this poem by Evie Shockley?

the 14-year-old girl was treated like:

(a) a grown woman.

(b) a grown man.

the bikini-clad girl was handled by the cop like:

(a) a prostitute.

(b) a prostitute by her pimp.

the girl was slung to the ground like:

(a) a sack of garbage into a dumpster.

(b) somebody had something to prove.

the girl’s braids flew around her head like:

(a) helicopter blades.

(b) she’d been slapped.

the black girl was pinned to the ground like:

(a) an amateur wrestler in a professional fight.

(b) swimming in a private pool is a threat to national security.

the girl’s cries sounded like:

(a) the shrieks of children on a playground.

(b) the shrieks of children being torn from their mothers.

the protesting girl was shackled like:

(a) a criminal.

(b) a runaway slave.

liken it or not

—mckinney, texas, june 2015

Why does the author mention that Marco Rubio, a NRA-friendly Republican was considering a ban on high-capacity magazines? (Magazines here means a chamber that stores and feeds ammunition to a gun)

Possessed of that blend of innocence and savvy peculiar to teenagers, the Stoneman Douglas survivors indeed have emerged as a rare, perhaps even unique, voice in the gun debate. They are old enough to advocate for themselves, yet young enough to still embody a certain innocence, to retain a certain idealism about how the world should be. They come across as both fearless and fragile. And like all teenagers, they have no tolerance for BS. Just ask Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who received a harsh grilling at the CNN Town Hall last Wednesday night. (By the evening’s end, the NRA-friendly Republican had gone so far as to say he’d consider a ban on high-capacity magazines.)

What's the meaning of resigned in this passage about a 400 pound football player?

It's not where Daniel Faalele wants to begin, but when you're 6'9" and close to 400 pounds, it's hard to start anywhere else.

And in truth, it's hard not to ask the questions he has answered his entire life—about his height and weight and how it could all come together to form an athlete we have never seen before.

As Minnesota's soon-to-be sophomore right tackle gracefully eases into a chair at the team's football complex, donning an XXXXL maroon golf shirt and size-18 Nikes, he looks resigned to it. He knows the questions are inevitable.

What is the main idea of this passage?

While immigration flows, if managed efficiently and flexibly, would bring strong opportunities for economic growth, U.S. immigration laws remain outdated, cumbersome, and rather restrictive. These laws have substantially limited immigration for work-related reasons, both among the highly educated (scientists and engineers) and the less educated (construction, agricultural, and personal service workers). The misalignment between restrictive laws and economic incentives has also caused the population of undocumented immigrants to expand rapidly. Attracted by employment, but unable to secure a legal permit, 11 million people work and have set down roots in the United States, despite great uncertainty and little protection.

Why does the narrator of this poem include the simile "the seed packets in my pocket sound like a baby’s toy rattle"?

nālani and

i walk

to our

small community

garden plot

in mānoa —

the seed

packets in

my pocket

sound like

a baby’s

toy rattle —

when do

they spray

glyphosate along

the sidewalks?

from kunia

to waimea,

fifty thousand

acres of

gmo fields —

how will

open air

pesticide drift

affect our

unborn daughter,

whose nerve

endings are

just beginning

to root? —

we plant

seeds in

rows, soil

gathers under

our fingernails —

syngenta, dupont,

dow, pioneer,

basf, monsanto

$240 million

seed sector —

corn for

cattle feed

and syrup —

runoff turns

[our] streams

red — poisons

lo‘i — 50,000

heart sea

urchins die off —

what will

our daughter

be able

to plant

in this

paradise of

fugitive dust —