English Language Arts: Poetry Analysis (TEKS.ELA.9-12.8.B) Practice Test

At dusk, a black handwriting lifts off wires; a script of wings that edits sky with swerves, soft s's stitching silence into spires, each curve a question curled, then quickly curves again—again—until the air is rope, a braided dare, a dare that doesn't fray: they split, they knit; they narrow, widen, cope, their many minds one mind that finds its way. Streetlights flicker; slicker streets receive their liquid grammar, live and spilling, still— no leader leans; yet patterns breathe and weave, a murmured sum of wills without a will. Between the gust and hush, the swarm writes 'stay' by never staying—order born of sway.

High noon hums—locusts load the light with heat, the road a rope of mirage, slow and loose. Then north unclenches: long blue wall, low, mute, a cold shoal rolling, shouldering the spruce. Barbed wire mouths a minor, moaning tone; the stock tank stones go steel; wind drills the bone; dust's gold goes gray—gone— doors slam; dogs fold; the bold sun is undone. Breath turns to smoke and spoke; the sky says No. Rain stitches straight; the cotton fields take note. The house, a held-in chord, learns how to bend— hinges sing thin; tin skins the roof; you know the drop by how the sentence shortens, ends. After the shove, the air is clean and spare— a scrubbed refrain; we stand and learn to bear.