Standing-Room Only at Seventh Annual Marquez Poetry Reading

By JACQUELINE PRIMO | Assistant Managing Editor

Marquez Charter Elementary School third- and fourth-graders gathered their courage and took to the mic at the Seventh Annual Marquez California Poets in the Schools Poetry Reading at Palisades Branch Library on Wednesday, Jan. 27,

It was standing-room only in the library’s Community Room where family and friends of the young poets gathered shoulder-to-shoulder to listen to the students read their poetry from the 2016 anthology, “From a Bird’s Eye View.”

“Thank you poets for really giving it your all and being so passionate about your work,” said Michelle Bitting-Abrams at the start of the poetry reading.

Bitting-Abrams was honored as Poet Laureate of Pacific Palisades in 2012. She spends five weeks with each grade level (this year, grades three and four at Marquez), introducing the students to famous poets and all styles of poetry before putting on the reading where the budding poets can read their original poetry aloud.

“We go down the rabbit hole,” Bitting-Abrams told the gathered crowd as they munched on chocolate sandwich cookies and cheese and crackers. “They write these [poems] in 15 minutes, sometimes less,” adding that the students had practiced reading their poems aloud in class before the big day.

Two Marquez poets—Sophia Hopkins and Aidan Petoyan—will have their poems included in the California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthology for 2015, Bitting-Abrams told the Palisadian-Post.

Dangerous | By Kayla Catalano

Dangerous is cleaning the dishes

when you drop your mom’s favorite

glass bowl. It is white with all her kids’

handprints on it. Dangerous is when

you’re walking on your tile floor hoping

you don’t step on glass and that you can

clean it up before your mom comes home,

but as your mom comes up the driveway

you drop the broom, you run upstairs,

hope your mom doesn’t notice, but she will.

Dangerous.

Freaky Friday | By Dylan Zuckerman

I was coming home from school and

it was dark. I got into the car and a clown

poked up from outside my window. It had

a red squishy nose that honked and

his eyes popped out like he was an alien.

He had blue hair, a green body, brown face,

and orange ears. I banged on the window

to try to make him scared. It did not work.

My mom started the car and started to leave.

I realized that the clown was stuck to the window.

It started to slip off because we were speeding

so fast we blew the stop sign! We finally got

home and opened the front door. I saw

a skull sitting on my couch getting comfortable.

I realized that the skull was scary and

he was watching My Little Pony,

a show for 2 year olds with

unicorns, hearts and peace signs.

If I Had a Secret Place | By Annalisa Hurd

If I had a secret place it would have

a castle made of gold and glass. It would be

on the top of the world. A secret ladder

would appear and take me up, up, up.

The smell of pancakes, fresh and sweet,

would be wafting into my nose. Only

my friends and me, my sister and me,

or only me.

Just me.