A weekly featured poem of provocation and witness. You can find more poetry and arts news from Blog This Rock.

Final Exam Administration

I enter to find all the students in uniform
occupying a small room.

I hand out pencils and registration forms.
Some begin without orders.

I remind them to remain anonymous
no names, just ID numbers should appear

on the waiting pages, white and clean
as unwritten letters or discharges.

Just a number the private
in BCGs and fatigues mumbles

from the back that’s all
we are. A number

and a gun. His comrades laugh,
erasing what might have been.

Do your best I say,
and they settle, salute.

-Remica L. Bingham
Used by permission.