Writing on the Wall
By Patricia Asuncion

Trace chalk dust memorialized
childhood blackboard. Washable
no-muss markers
replace broken crayons
in tin cans in old Chicago
brick school house.

Capital and lower-
case cursive letters on elementary
class walls pushed penmanship,
no longer required
by tech teaching
digitized communication.

Password for today’s
screen to catch news bytes,
poke family and friends,
travel to virtual Ireland,
3-D print anything—guns to gowns.

Only scene unchanged
since Windy City school days
is the news—
Russian-American tension,
Arab-Israeli conflict,
world hunger,
end-of-world pollution.

Will there
be an app to fix
the human condition?