Isabel Jenkins Assignment 2

deadpan

at times I notice
the inconsistencies -- the conflicting opinions
expelled by my peers
with their faces void of all expression
but simultaneously narrating
a story woven with complexity.

and at times I feel
no one is seeing with clarity
blinded by paper flurries from colleges
and black percentages on white slips
that are meaningless
much like those found in fortune cookies,
indeterminant of the future.

and at times I wish
we could be engaged
that everything would sharpen into focus
at a knife point aimed with precision,
yet all around me
eyes glaze over
subtly aware of life's incongruence.

and although I notice the inconsistencies
at times I fear
all the color in me is washing out
that I'm becoming another blank face --
one of the millions
that chose to do nothing.

//

The tone I created was one of deep reflection and pessimism on the high school experience. (Promise I'm nowhere near this angsty in real life - when I try and write happy things they end up even more ridiculous). Diction choices such as "conflicting," "blinded," and "meaningless," convey a sense of despair, while images of emptiness and black/white contrast utilized throughout further this distress. The lack of capitalization, most punctuation, and proper syntax breaks shows apathy and carelessness in the writing. The brief allusion to fortune cookies and fate prediction demonstrates the speaker's disillusion with grades, and how we tend to determine our self-worth and probability of future "success" and happiness by a couple scores and percentages.