Poems from Lois Marie Harrod's Brief Term

2011-03-12T04:51:00.000-08:00

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

Return to loismarieharrod

Poems from Brief Term

Poems from Lois Marie Harrod's Brief Term