Flutter-flap, scrape—
test books set the pace
of its stumble toward death.
Twenty-three students code their
response grids, attempting dejected response items.
What is the number of remaining legs
divided by the number of original legs
on a centipede?
Express your answer as a decimal
or fraction.
Nature’s symmetry, shredded and
marred by MSDE artillery,
bears no resemblance to the arthropod reflections done by math students.
Forty-five minutes remain in session one.
In the pencil-marked Steralite tub,
it scuttles—lopsided—in left-hand circles,
trampling over and tangling in the scatter of broken, detached limbs.
You may round pi to 3.14 or 22/7.
pi2(6) is the circumference of this futility.
Tapping slippery plastic with one unscathed antenna, it lurches forward
with the lunge and lull of a slinky.
Mouth parts help pull its new burden.
The geometry and physics of its locomotion,
once so perfect—neat angles forming and fading in unison, now mock
the creature defined in terms of feet.
It rests, a pedal casualty between its mandibles.
Does it know the leg’s its own? Centipedes feed on arthropods.
What is the cosine of the angle MISSING-INSECT-LEG?
Multiply by twelve
and express your answer in
A…B…C…D units of pain.
Indifferently dropping the limb, it moves on,
less attached to it than me, in my romanticized entomological suffering.
We will now take a ten-minute break.
Tssst, Tssst.
Compasses scratch out graphite circles,
Their pendular sounds whet the portent of death.
Yet absurd adaptation moves,
inching like
the small green worms who dropped from
Oaks this spring.
I pace rows, monitor more closely:
test book session 2, answer book session 2;
test book session 2, answer book session 2;
Please take your purse off your desk...I know you’re
done working.
These are the rules.
Returning to my desk, I remember.
Hopeful and contrite, I pull the stack of test books from the tub.
Still, flattened,
it sticks to the back of form TR110881.
One hour, five minutes, thirty-one seconds remain in session two.
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