"David Talamántez on the Last Day of Second Grade" was written by Rosemary Catacalos. The poem is about a young boy named David Talamántez who attends grade school while his mother is at work. While he is there, David acts out in a way that is not acceptable to most behavioral standards today, but at the same time is not overly out of line for a second grader. It appears as if he is resisting the world around him, or perhaps he does not understand what is excepted of him, and gets frustrated at his teachers negative remarks.
             The poem takes place in San Antonio, Texas 1988. David is running around the schoolyard leaving his mark as he throws pieces of lined paper into the air one by one. He watches them fall to the ground in the shade of a fountain. He takes batches of paper and rolls them into a horn though which he shouts "David! David, yes!". The papers are then discarded, and David runs across Brazos Street. When he reaches the other side he kicks a can in the gutter and starts to wander home. The poem then says that David believes that birds are warm blooded because of how quickly they fly, and the long complicated music they produce which is always different unlike dogs or cats. But because of his thoughts he was given negative marks in Science, as well as for putting his name in the wrong place on the paper. More points are deducted because he failed to skip lines between the heading and answers. Massive X's are placed on his paper, X's much bigger than his tiny writing. He is told to write larger by his teacher in red ink which is placed at the top of many pages. He is given X's for Spelling, Language Expression, and Messiness. He seems to be good in art though. He then receives a 70 on a Reading Station Artist's Corner in which he traced and colored a picture from Henny Penny. But because he added in extra details by hand that were not in the original picture, points were...