4th grader poem using figurative language.
I feel like I haven't been reading because I haven't finished a book in some time - but of course I've been reading. I've been underlining the sentences in letters from friends like:
"I've been thinking of all those super short flash piece I wrote and I see now it's not a flash collection but a seed packet."
I've been reading a poem from a brilliant 4th grade student with metaphors like "spring brewing" and "the fiery stencils of leaves" and "in the clouds are holes, that the sun would shine like a basket of hot coals."
Or another student who wrote, brilliantly, "Bananas are when the moon falls from the sky."
I've been beta-reading a friend's sci-fi novel, where passengers on a ship "fly like a flock of the birds we've never seen, and fall back to us like the rain we've never felt."
I've just marveled over the first page Michelle Ross' brilliant opener "Atoms" where "It's as though your teacher has taken the pot she's been feeding you spoonfuls from and poured it over your head."
I've been loving Rion Amilcar Scott's stories in INSURRECTIONS, especially the one about the daughter purposefully not beating her father at chess, about how loving someone means not getting as close to them or yourself as is actually possible.
I've been reading the similes my students wrote, like:
* dark as sludge
*dark as a mouth-hole
*dark as a mustache
*dark as graphite
*dark as the road
*scratchy as burnt toast
*scratchy as sugar
*tight as the end of a balloon
*tight as a sausage
*tight as a molecule
*tight as a wedgie
*tight as a bear hug
*tight as the mouth of a snake
*heavy as the moon
*heavy as a glacier
*heavy as chains
*heavy as a lake
*wild as a sock in the dryer
*wild as Godzilla
*wild as Utah
*wild as green
*loose as a bird
*loose as a flag flying in the wind
*loose as a skirt
*light as a unicorn's teardrop
*light as a penny
*light as a toenail
*twisted as a maze
*twisted as spaghetti
*twisted as a spring coil
*twisted as headphones
*twisted as trees