How Narrator Affects Text: Poetry Practice Test

Read the poem embedded below, then answer the question.

Title: “After the Verdict”

The courthouse steps are warm as bread.

They hand us our phones like returned knives.

My sister laughs too loudly; the sound

skips across the plaza and does not come back.

We are told to go home, to resume

the small errands of innocence.

But my hands keep making the shape of a fist

inside my pockets.

I remember the defendant’s mother

pressing tissues into a purse—methodical,

as if grief were a spill you could blot.

I hated her for being a mother.

On the bus, a man asks what happened.

I say, Nothing. I say, Justice.

The words do not fit in my mouth;

they scrape my teeth on the way out.

How does the speaker’s perspective shape the reader’s interpretation of the poem?

Read the following poem, narrated by a landlord drafting an email about a rent increase:

Title: “Subject Line”

I write: “Dear Tenant,” and the words

sit stiffly in their borrowed suit.

The template says “market adjustment,”

a phrase that sounds like weather

and not a choice.

Your name is in my spreadsheet,

a cell that turns green when paid.

I remember, vaguely, your dog

and the way you carry groceries

like apologies.

My finger hovers over “send.”

Outside my office window

a construction crane lifts steel

as if the city is always becoming

something richer than its people.

Still, I add a smiley face,

then delete it.

How does the perspective of a landlord composing a rent-increase email most affect interpretation of the poem?