Tess+A

=**//DEATH//**=

**By Emily Dickinson**
I heard a  fly buzz when I died; The stillness round my form Was like the stillness in the air Between the heaves of storm. The eyes beside had wrung them dry, And breaths were gathering sure For that last onset, when the king Be witnessed in his power. I willed my keepsakes, signed away What portion of me I Could make assignable,-and then There interposed a fly, With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz, Between the light and me; And then the windows failed, and then I could not see to see.

**By Adrienne Rich**
You see a man trying to think.

You want to say to everything: Keep off! Give him room! But you only watch, terrified the old consolations will get him at last like a fish half-dead from flopping and almost crawling across the shingle almost breathing the raw, agonizing air till a wave pulls it back blind into the triumphant sea.


 * We Real Cool**
 * By Gwendolyn Brooks**

We real cool. We Left school. We

Lurk late. We Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We Die soon.

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. The tigers in the panel that she made Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.