59 School poems

The place we lived was only an idea, Nothing to do with the failed cotton mill town Where a record shop, some bars, and a pizzeria Were all we ever cared to call our own. From nightmares of a happy life with kids We'd wake in boozy sweat to find the floor Still cobbled with bottle caps and take-out lids, Our twenties crumpled safely in a drawer, Unspent like all the hours ahead that night We met each other in the common room And found somehow without the help of light Our way across the river by the time Dawn spilled down from the campus to the banks We'd come to, single, sobered-up again, To see the morning glories give their thanks For things we had, and hardly noticed, then.

Now I lay me down to rest, I pray I pass tomorrow’s test. If I should die before I wake, That’s one less test I’ll have to take.

She never spoke, which made her obvious, the way death makes the air obvious in an empty chair, the way sky compressed between bare branches is more gray or blue, the way a window is more apparent than a wall. She held her silence to her breast like a worn coat, smoke, an armful of roses. Her silence colored the smaller silences that came and went, that other students stood up and filled in. I leaned near the window in my office. She sat on the edge of a chair. Hips rigid, fidgeting while I made my little speech. February light pressed its cold back against the glass, sealing us in. She focused on my lips as I spoke, as if to study how it's done, the sheer mechanics of it: orchestration of jaw and tongue, teeth shifting in tandem, shaping the air. So I stopped, let her silence drift over us, let it sift in like smoke or snow, let its petals settle on my shoulders. I looked outside to the branches of a stripped tree, winter starlings folded in their speckled wings, chilled flames shuddering at the tips. Students wandered across campus as if under water, hands and hair unfurling, their soundless mouths churning— irate or ecstatic, I couldn't tell—ready to burn it all down or break into song. When I looked back her eyes had found the window: tree, students, birds swimming by, mute in their element. It was painful to hear the papery rasp of her folding and unfolding hands, to watch color smudging her neck and temple, branching to mist the delicate rim of one ear. I listened to the air sunder between us, the feverish hush collapse. I could hear her breath—smoke rising from ice. I could see what it cost her to make that leap. What heat it takes for the body to blossom into speech.

The students eat something and then watch the news, a little, then go to sleep. When morning breaks in they find they have not forgotten all: they recall the speckle of words on certain pages of the chapter assigned, a phrase of strange weight from a chapter that was not assigned, and something said almost flippantly by a classmate on the Green which put much of the 18th century into perspective. Noticing themselves at the sink they are aware the hands they wash are the "same" hands as in high school—though the face is different. Arriving in the breakfast hall having hardly felt the transit, they set down their trays on one table; presently, glance at another corner of the space: that was where we mostly sat two years ago, that was where Gerry said what he said about circles, the concept of, and Leonardo da Vinci.

A reflection on my students They are so beautiful, and so very young they seem almost to glitter with perfection, these creatures that I briefly move among. I never get to stay with them for long, but even so, I view them with affection: they are so beautiful, and so very young. Poised or clumsy, placid or high-strung, they're expert in the art of introspection, these creatures that I briefly move among— And if their words don't quite trip off the tongue consistently, with just the right inflection, they remain beautiful. And very young. Still, I have to tell myself it's wrong to think of them as anything but fiction, these creatures that I briefly move among— Because, like me, they're traveling headlong in that familiar, vertical direction that coarsens beautiful , blackmails young — the two delusions we all move among.

My chalk is no longer than a chip of fingernail, Chip by which I must explain this Monday Night the verbs “to get;” “to wear,” “to cut.” I’m not given much, these tired students, Knuckle-wrapped from work as roofers, Sour from scrubbing toilets and pedestal sinks. I’m given this room with five windows, A coffee machine, a piano with busted strings, The music of how we feel as the sun falls, Exhausted from keeping up. I stand at The blackboard. The chalk is worn to a hangnail, Nearly gone, the dust of some educational bone. By and by I’m Cantiflas, the comic Busybody in front. I say, “I get the coffee.” I pick up a coffee cup and sip. I click my heels and say, “I wear my shoes.” I bring an invisible fork to my mouth And say, “I eat the chicken.” Suddenly the class is alive— Each one putting on hats and shoes, Drinking sodas and beers, cutting flowers And steaks—a pantomime of sumptuous living. At break I pass out cookies. Augustine, the Guatemalan, asks in Spanish, “Teacher, what is ‘tally-ho’?” I look at the word in the composition book. I raise my face to the bare bulb for a blind answer. I stutter, then say, “Es como adelante.” Augustine smiles, then nudges a friend In the next desk, now smarter by one word. After the cookies are eaten, We move ahead to prepositions— “Under,” “over,” and “between,” Useful words when la migra opens the doors Of their idling vans. At ten to nine, I’m tired of acting, And they’re tired of their roles. When class ends, I clap my hands of chalk dust, And two students applaud, thinking it’s a new verb. I tell them adelante, And they pick up their old books. They smile and, in return, cry, “Tally-ho.” As they head for the door.

Her Focusing on blanks, A, B, C, all of above. Your eyes lock on mine. Brain now a washing machine— facts, letters tumble and spin. Him Tests are less trouble for me since I have met you. Is it possible? Can having you in my life increase the size of my brain?

The students know the agenda. When I step inside our classroom, the PowerPoint is loaded, the student presenting her report stands poised to begin. And so she does. This day is her second try, the first a wash due to our failed technology. I ask,Do you think you will earn another chance each time error is out of your hands?

I was sent home the first day with a note: Danny needs a ruler. My father nodded, nothing seemed so apt. School is for rules, countries need rulers, graphs need graphing, the world is straight ahead. It had metrics one side, inches the other. You could see where it started and why it stopped, a foot along, how it ruled the flighty pen, which petered out sideways when you dreamt. I could have learned a lot, understood latitude, or the border with Canada, so stern compared to the South and its unruly river with two names. But that first day, meandering home, I dropped it.

All winter we sat blind, I next to the girl who loved her scabs, the blood shields her head gave up, her face a sun of blank amazement. She drew.This means love: a circle with a line through it.More work: a cross. More crosses. Ice sloughed through fields. Ice river, the pages of our notebooks. Outside: limbs and roads and wires. Outside cracked with force and turning. Our poems filled with salt. He took me to his bed. The writer never speaks. The writer speaks in details, the sateen lining of my coat, the star point of tongue kissing. The winter speaks in the whip. Runoff nixed with ash. I spilt water on my notebook. Words went back to ink; paper back to ruffle, pulp.You smell like dog, the girl said. You will be left like the winter. Little sputter in the car’s craw. Little crevice in the pavement. Ice reminder. He took me to his bed, saying:Ali, Ali, tell no one.