AP Literature (Lit) follows previous English classes’ structure as students read novels, short stories, poems and plays, but the course is not just a continuation of the first three years of high school. The class delves further in-depth and students read at a faster pace.

A flutter of pink in a large city, a girl hurries through the rain and hops into a cab.

When senior Peter Hsieh was a sophomore in Jerry Sheehy’s world history class, little did he know that a project about Liberalism would shape his future interests and pursuits.

My sister and I are really close, closer than most sisters usually are. Our earliest memory is of us, when we lived in Belgium and went to the same preschool. It had been raining, and I, lucky girl that I was, got to show my little sister around big sis’s classroom. We were going a bit slower than the rest of the class, and in my excitement, I let go of her hand and splashed ahead.

English teacher Bill Peck first met Judith Sutton when he was her student in high school. Little did he know that four decades later he would be taking her place as the teacher of the poetry program she created.

The last bee hovers around a wilting sunflower
As the last leaf turns tawny on the oak.
Rays of honey spill through my window
As I sift through my closet wondering
What to take with me. I reach to the top shelf
And pick a dress. Kids size 4 reads the label
Smudged from too many hot cycles as my fingers
Glide over tattered ruffles at the neckline
And grass stains on the side from catching ladybugs
Under summer’s simpler sun. I press my dress
Against my body, flash to curtseying at a lawn party
Where I danced on my father’s shoes. I sigh,

In the last pew of the church,
Jim fidgeted between parents.
Lifting himself on small hands,
He struggled to behold what lay
Over the sea of combed toupees
And marveled at winking glitter
Twinkling on the blushing bride.
The organ trumpeted its song
Upward to trembling beams.
When the procession stopped,
A dull voice sighed and prayed
As the audience rustled in pews.
Jim tugged at his tight collar,
Noted red spreading on cheeks
From heat of six hundred people.
Women with bulky hats fanned,
Admired the pair, their passion,
Recollected more youthful days.

Warm and gooey from the oven
He knows he started out innocent,
Squeezed with love from a scoop.
His skin smoothed and patted
Before he birthed beneath a cozy 350°,
Surrounded by his fellow doughboys.

He never knew his lopsided curves
And lumpy chocolate chips
Meant a lifetime of watching
The spaces around him grow,
The buttery circles that taught him
He was something different.

As crumbs tumbled from him,
He knew his time was coming.
A buttery disposition can’t last
Forever, he thinks. Too soon,
Moisture will creep into soft cusps

drawing cities out of fog into light to build our own gates (golden & light)/
we are racing up and down ways & means, cracked streets and cracking fears/
firing our own escapes from fire escapes—
floor after floor & my eyes are rising to the risen sun
(flowers in sills bloom into your eyes & face & hands,
bouquets to carry me home)

criss-crossing telephone wires connect house to house with crackling thoughts
and ferry all these dreams to you and back in the still A.M.

The world around us simmers, bent awry –
the more we see, the more we turn aside.
Why bother when the die’s so long been cast?
We’ve slept enough; let numbers be our guide.

It’s happiness, but happiness can’t last;
on cresting waves it crashes, surging past
all reason, washing up our greatest woe:
we can’t turn back, time sweeps by far too fast.

The more we learn, the more we know,
the more we know, the less we slow,
the more we meet, the fewer we keep,
the more we turn, the faster we go.

I once knew a man who swam the ocean deep;