Bread
Sometimes the past returns,
as a student whose knees
seemed too narrow to bear
his classmates’ jeers,
queer, faggot,
his voice so foreign
you astonish yourself
when you call out his name,
Michael and it is.
He's traded his thin white arms
for a leather jacket and shoulders
broad enough to hang a sleeve,
a soldier now, holding
the sky above Somalia
an ebony bowl in his hands.
His friends have told him
to write the stench of Mogadishu,
he has friends now,
but he wants to tell you
about the white stars rise above the desert,
and as he looks at your ceiling,
the lights seem to float
like a basket of bread in the evening.
Thus he begins singing his songs,
this boy whom you do not remember
saying a word in your class, his voice
now a white loaf in the sand
and all around, the students
roll up their eyes from their dry study
as if they too were hungry
and you wonder what crust
you could have thrown him
that made him come back to you today.
The Erotics of Teaching
Love is a better teacher than duty. Albert Einstein
Sometimes I envy those women who love men
as I love students,
those relentless mistresses
who offer a semblance
of constancy and devotion,
but ask no constancy or devotion
for themselves, knowing
that in a year or two
almost all will be forgotten.
Sisyphus in High School
The long commute, 32.5 miles, into the rich suburb
where he couldn’t afford to live, the daily traffic snarls,
and then the fatcat students, who didn’t know a semicolon from balderdash
and didn’t care, no matter how often he went over the rules,
and what difference did it make which their they used
if their was no they’re there, as someone–who was
the cross they had to bear between Spencer Tracy
and a beer stein, or so their parents said they said
he said–said, Mr. Sisyphus understood what they meant,
didn’t he, wasn’t it all grading on the curb
in this doggy doggy world where anyone with a head
on his holder knew a north wind from a night squawk.
Well, it was supposed to be an honors course,
but how could Old Sis expect them to read the text,
or even the test, you didn’t say you wanted an essay,
they had other things to try, fencing practice, chess club,
work to pay for insurance on the Beamer
and a little marijuana on the side, which, of coarse they
being so, didn’t know how to spell ether.
To purchase contact Lois Marie Harrod, lmharrod1@verizon.net or CoolWomen@verizon.net
