How Plot Orders Events: Poetry Practice Test

Read the poem below, then answer the question.

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?

Read the poem below, then answer the question.

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?