WHAT IS THIS POEM ABOUT What is the deeper theme or message of the poem?
What specific lines, images, or words in this poem show the theme or message? You MUST include at least 2 examples.

Just Push

By lindamichellebaron

One day the teacher walked us to the
room.

The door was closed, the keys inside.

The teacher tried the door,

but it didn’t open.

We waited until he got another key.

That’s when he realized

It was open all along.

All he had to do was push.

Sometimes,

I think he does us the same way,

Has us waiting,

while he looks for the key of knowledge

to let us in,

when really, all he has to do

is give us a little push

by just thinking…

we can.

fiction/fantasy

explanation:

word count 168

serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.