AP English Literature and Composition Quiz: How Plot Orders Events Poetry

Read the poem below, then answer the question.

Title: "Cutlery Drawer"

I open the drawer and the knives flash back like they remember hands. When we first moved in, we argued about forks as if the choice could decide our future. Now the spoons are mismatched, and so are we. In a month, I will pack only what's mine and leave the rest to rust.

How does the poem's ordering (present image, early domestic argument, present fracture, future departure) contribute to the poem's meaning?

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Title: "Spool"

In the future, my daughter will find the cassette behind the tax forms and dead batteries. She will press play and hear my twenty-year-old voice saying I'm fine, I'm fine. In the past, I am in a car with my mother who refuses to cry at red lights. She teaches me to sing along to the static. In the present, I rewind until the tape thins and the song becomes a blank, bright hiss.

How does the poem's ordering—moving from future to past to present—contribute to its meaning?

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Title: "Stitches"

I pull the thread through, and the tear closes like a mouth learning to forgive. Earlier, the shirt belonged to my mother and smelled faintly of her garden gloves. Now it is mine, and the needle pricks my thumb as if to remind me. Later, I will wear it to a meeting and pretend I wasn't mending grief.

How does the poem's ordering (present mending, earlier ownership, later wearing) contribute to its meaning?

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Title: "Key Under the Mat"

I check under the mat even though I live alone. Habit is a small animal that won't die. Back then, you hid the key there for late nights when my hands were full of groceries. Now the porch light buzzes, and the door stays locked. Someday, I will stop looking and call that peace.

How does the poem's ordering—present habit, past usefulness, present loneliness, then future "peace"—shape the poem's theme?

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Title: "Tide Table"

High tide at 6:04, the chart says, but my feet already know. Last summer, we misread the numbers and got stranded on the sandbar, laughing until the water rose. Now I check the table twice, serious as a priest. Next summer, I will come alone and still bring the chart.

How does the poem's ordering—present reliance on the chart, past carefree mistake, present seriousness, future solitude—contribute to its meaning?

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Title: "Chalk Outline"

The sidewalk is clean now, but I still step around the space where the accident happened. That day, the sirens braided the air and someone's shoe lay on its side like a stunned animal. Now children draw hopscotch squares over the memory. Next summer, I will walk this route again and pretend my feet don't remember.

How does the poem's ordering—present avoidance, past accident, present overwriting, future pretense—shape the poem's meaning?

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Title: "Voicemail from the Past"

Your old number calls me—impossible—and I answer. Only wind, only static. Back then, you left messages like breadcrumbs so I could find my way to you. Now my throat tightens at a sound that isn't even you. Tomorrow, I will change my phone plan as if bureaucracy could fix haunting.

How does the poem's ordering (impossible present call, past pattern, present reaction, future administrative fix) contribute to the poem's meaning?

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Title: "The Note in the Book"

I open the novel and your handwriting falls out like a pressed flower. Before you left, you underlined a passage about forgiveness and circled the word "still." Now the page is stained where my thumb keeps returning. After I finish reading, I will shelve the book spine outward, hiding the title.

How does the poem's ordering—present discovery, past act of leaving the note, present fixation, future concealment—shape the poem's meaning?

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Title: "Microwave Minutes"

Two minutes left, the display insists, and the soup turns slowly in its glass bowl. Earlier, I skipped lunch to finish the report and told myself hunger was discipline. Now my stomach argues with the beeping. Tonight, I will eat standing up and call it efficiency.

How does the poem's ordering (present countdown, earlier self-denial, present bodily demand, future rationalization) contribute to the poem's meaning?

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Title: "The Map App Recalculates"

Arrived: the screen declares it, but the house is dark. My headlights sweep the mailbox like a searchlight. Rewind: last summer we drove this road laughing at the cows, at ourselves, at nothing. Now the GPS reroutes, insisting there is another way. In a year, I will avoid this exit as if grief were a toll.

How does the poem's ordering—beginning at "Arrived," then "Rewind," then projecting "In a year"—contribute to the poem's meaning?

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Title: "Wintering"

In March, the snow finally loosens its grip and the porch steps show their bruises. In December, earlier, I bought too many candles as if light could be stored like flour. Now January gnaws at the windows. I keep the wicks trimmed, waiting for a thaw I've already seen.

What is the effect of introducing March (thaw) before returning to December and January?

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Title: The First Snow, Replayed

Now, the video loads— buffering, buffering— and my son's face freezes mid-laugh.

Before he could walk, I carried him outside, his body a warm question against my coat.

Years from now, he will deny he ever liked snow. He will call it inconvenience, salt, slush, late buses.

The screen unfreezes. He reaches for the falling white as if it's something that can be kept.

In context, what is the function of the poem's ordering—beginning in the present with a video, moving to the past memory, jumping to a future prediction, and ending back in the present replay?

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Title: The Day We Learned the Word "After"

After, the teacher collects our papers as if grief is something you can staple. The hallway smells of pencil shavings and disinfectant.

Before, we were trading stickers, arguing about whose dinosaur could beat whose. Someone's laugh cracked open and we didn't notice.

After, the principal's voice comes through the intercom— careful, slow— like walking on ice.

Now, I still hear that carefulness whenever a phone rings. I still taste metal when a sentence begins, We regret to—

In context, what is the function of the poem's ordering—alternating after and before moments and then ending in the present?

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Title: The Jar on the Top Shelf

First, my mother's hands— wet, sugared—turn peaches into August and seal it with a pop of heat.

Now, I stand on a chair in her empty kitchen, reaching for the jar she saved for "later."

Later, I will open it alone in my own apartment, and the smell will be so sudden I will say her name out loud.

But before I twist the lid today, I hold the glass up to the window. Light moves through it like time trying to explain itself.

In context, what is the function of the poem's ordering—moving from the initial canning to the present reaching, to a future opening, then back to a moment just before opening in the present?

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Title: Voicemail Saved

After the funeral, I keep your message like a coin in my shoe. It clicks when I walk, a small insistence.

Now, the phone lights up at midnight— no caller, just the blue glow and my thumb hovering over your name.

When you left it, you were laughing, breathless from climbing stairs. You said my full name twice, as if it could hold me in place.

I press play again. The room fills with a version of you that doesn't know how the story ends.

In context, what is the function of the poem's ordering—opening after the funeral, moving to the present moment of temptation, then returning to when the message was left, and ending with the present replay?

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"The House Practices Burning" The smoke alarm is only a bird we taught to scream. It screams.

Yesterday morning, I label boxes: WINTER, TAXES, YOUR SHIRTS. A marker bleeds through cardboard like a prophecy.

Now, the hallway is a tunnel where pictures tilt, trying to flee. I remember to grab the dog and forget my own shoes.

Ten years ago, we paint this room the color of new teeth. You lift me to the ceiling corner to sign our names where no one looks.

Now again, outside on the lawn, neighbors wrapped in blankets, I watch the roof exhale and think: So that's what we built.

How does the poem's ordering—moving from the fire to earlier domestic scenes and back—primarily contribute to the poem's meaning?

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"Elegy with a Receipt" I find the receipt in your coat: milk, batteries, a newspaper, and the cheap carnations you hated.

At the funeral, my aunt says, He lived a good long while. Her words land like a lid on a pot still boiling.

Now, at my table, I smooth the paper until the ink begins to fade, as if time can be rubbed into obedience.

Before you died, you stood in the aisle arguing with the cashier about fifty cents, your face bright with being alive.

Back to my table, the receipt curls. I hold it flat with my palm the way you held doors for strangers.

What is the primary function of the poem's ordering, which begins with the discovery of the receipt, shifts to the funeral and a vivid scene from before the death, and then returns to the present?

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"Inventory in Reverse" I am already at the hospital— my mother's voice a paper cup pressed to my ear, thin with distance. The nurse says, Not yet.

Two weeks earlier, I am in the kitchen, counting pills into the orange bottle, each one a small moon I cannot swallow. My father rinses a mug and does not look up.

Now, the hallway clock keeps practicing the same sentence until it believes it. I watch the door the way you watch weather.

Before any of it, summer: my mother laughing at a joke she forgets mid-laugh, hand on the screen door, light caught in the webbing of her fingers.

Back to the hospital, the doctor's shoes squeak once—an answer without words. My mouth fills with the taste of pennies.

In the context of the poem, what is the primary function of the poem's ordering (moving from the hospital to earlier moments and then returning)?

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Title: "Hand-Me-Down"

I wear your old coat to the interview and hope its pockets remember confidence. When you were alive, you called it your armor and shrugged into it like a decision. Now the lining smells like cedar and a faint, vanished smoke. After I get the job—or don't—I will hang it up carefully, as if it can bruise.

How does the poem's ordering (present interview, past description, present sensory detail, future hanging up) contribute to the poem's meaning?

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Title: "Old Password"

I type your birthday and the account opens as if nothing has changed. Before we broke up, you told me not to forget it because forgetting would mean you were gone. Now the screen floods with photos I didn't ask to see. After I log out, I will wash my hands like I touched a relic.

How does the poem's ordering (present access, past request, present flood of images, future washing) contribute to the poem's meaning?