by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
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| Sophie Pender started The 93% Club when she was at Bristol University for students who felt discriminated against for not being rich and from private schools. Photograph: Graeme Robertson / The Guardian, March 6, 2021. |
My name is Sophie. Don't look down on me!
So what, if you talk posh, and scorn low-cost?
Since I met you, at university,
Our paths have never frictionlessly crossed!
Posh accents and the privilege they buy
Have short-changed us poor chavs for far too long.
It's time the ninety-three percent decry
Entitlement for private schools as wrong! ...
Pooh-poohing state-school kids as unrefined,
Excluding us from chances to succeed,
No longer will be suffered by my kind——
Determined, as we are, that you will heed
Elitist education taught by me:
Remember to respect the Ninety-Three!
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, The Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, and The Tallahassee Democrat. His limericks have appeared in Britain’s Daily Mail.