Month: October 2016

The Last Conference

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

at conferences she swings her legs
 back and forth, swish… kick
 and murmurs her replies,
 her set-to-be bragging portfolio of pride
 melted into a subtle acceptance
 of just good enough
 
 and with all eight eyes on her
 she hears the same words
 she’s heard for six years:
 Talk more.
 (when all the world is a whirlwind of noise
 and she has the quiet demeanor of one who always listens,  always knows)

 
 and the rims of her eyes redden
 after hearing the judgey truth too many times, and before a word escapes
 her last-year-in-elementary lips,
 they’re telling her not to cry.
 
 they beg us then for questions, concerns,
 wanting to fill in the ten minute gap that hangs like a carcass between us,
 but my words are swallowed too,
 behind my own quiet tears,
 my own red-rimmed eyes,
 and all i can hear is Scout’s voice
 proclaiming that school is a lesson in Group Dynamics,
 and my girl, my baby, doesn’t fit into that mold.
 
 instead we fill the hallway with sing-song voices
 to banter with her older sister,
 one year ahead and one million years mouthier,
 and my tears melt and her eyes soften and we move on.
 
 we step into the cold autumn night and she clings to each of our hands, unwilling to pull away,
 her last-year-of-elementary heart still as soft as six years back,
 still my little girl trying to find her place in this whirlwind world.
 
 

Debating

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

if our ballots could
 break through this glass barrier
 to at last reveal
 
 that moment of truth
 found tucked behind subtleties
 of words and spirits,
 
 we could change our fate
 towards a future made from love
 that we’ve all fought for.
 
 so let’s check the box:
 bring the true America
 back to where hope lives
 
 

Saturday Night Fever

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

on Saturdays we cut out grass
 and bend bits of metal
 and win medals in Tae Kwon Do
 and watch weird episodes of a modern drama
 while the oldest babysits
 and oh how our life has changed
 from changing diapers to ours changing diapers
 
 and we go to bed hours after
 the joy of slipping off clothes
 to slide into fleece pajamas
 with kittens in our laps
 and just love love love
 that we. can. relax.
 
 

The Terror of Being Female

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

i can’t believe our world this week–
 surrounded by the same chauvinistic bullshit
 my liberal baby-boomer parents raised me up against.
 and it’s 2016 and i have three daughters and a man, a husband,
 a born-and-bred Southern Baptist-raised Tennesseean, whose thoughts couldn’t enter the realm of filth so flippantly tossed
 into the national spectrum
 
 and we have a First Lady
 who should be our Queen
 whose words get twisted on my newsfeed within twenty-four hours
 by. A. White. Man.
 and i want to grab the world by its ears and shake some sense into it and put him in a swimming pool at age thirteen and have a hand slide up into his swimsuit.
 and put him on a bicycle at age fourteen and on the middle of a spring day have a creeper follow him home and chase him into an alley and expose himself to him.
 and i want to put him in the college library at age sixteen and have a stalker creep up behind him trying to reach up his shorts when he’s just searching for a poem by William Blake.
 
 And I want him to go fuck himself and his white male privilege that I have never seen in my home–the home of my birth or my marriage–even in all its whiteness
 
 And I want him to feel that terror of being female. Because every woman I know has had icy blood running through her veins in those moments of harassment and assault that have plagued us for all of time.
 
 But he won’t. Trump won’t apologize and he would argue till the day runs dark, and all i can do is pray to a god i don’t believe in that my three daughters don’t face the same fate. That they will find a home as safe as mine with a man as good as my father or husband and a world better than the one we have set before them now.
 
 Because it’s all i can do. Because i moved away in the pool and told my father about the flasher and left that library.
 
 Because i’m writing this now and somewhere in the world eyes are reading it and taking one moment to hear that terror slip out of my veins and transform into the truth that makes me Silent. No. More.

For Change’s Quake

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

this day, three years back:
 an unfair observation
 on a testing day.
 
 i thought i was done;
 trying to be good enough
 was just not enough
 
 and now? full circle–
 a grapevine request to see
 my expert teaching
 
 from a district head
 who saw just minutes of us
 (speaking for us all).
 
 now he’s bringing guests
 to show others how it looks
 to teach ELD
 
 (the irony stings
 with my facebook memory–
 a harsh reminder)
 
 but all things must change
 from weak saplings to gold leaves
 that have brought me home
 
 

Case of the Mondays

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

because it’s Monday
 the alarm sucks, kids are bored,
 and fall won’t happen–
 
 the classroom burns hot
 from a boiler turned on
 two weeks too early
 
 and everyone thinks
 it’s a holiday today,
 so here i sit. wait
 
 at the Jiffy Lube
 with the rest of the world
 panning for oil.
 
 this is white privilege.
 this is American life.
 black gold that burns all.
 
 
 

This Pussy Will Save Us!

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

it’s a dark world
 when a candidate’s words sting
 women worldwide
 
 i cannot hear more.
 i just want my girls’ freedom
 from this dark world.
 
 i want that sweet love
 that comes from kitten cuddles.
 and no more of Trump.
 
 

And Then I Remember

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

 This. This is why I teach. For three years she’s been in my class. She has gotten married. Had a baby. But she still can’t decode words. She still struggles with basic sentences. I know she has more going on in her mind than Bambara and Mali and motherhood, but I haven’t found a way to reach this girl. I haven’t been able to communicate with her in a way to help her understand. But “reliving” 1880s farm chores today, she said, “I got this. We do this in my country.” And today, today, today, she was the best at something. This. This is #whyiteach
 
 

Short This

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

ten years ago, as a young teacher,
 i would have killed to have such a flawless lesson.
 today?
 one component makes me feel like a failure.
 ask.
 ask why teachers leave this profession in droves.
 why we spend hours collecting fake data points to try to prove ourselves.
 why every damn day they must be
 interacting as if their intelligence
 could not be shown in another way.
 
 ask.
 ask.
 screw the introverts,
 the six weeks prior of building up talk,
 of transition handouts and forced verbal responses and
 Socratic seminars.
 this day, this day when i have them
 writing more sentences in one period
 than they’ve written in their entire
 school careers,
 i am judged as
 not even approaching,
 not even close to being good enough?
 
 Ask.
 i’ll tell you why.
 because with all the hoops and all the hopes and all the reasons i came into this career,
 some days,
 rainy days like today,
 dreary and plagued with doubt,
 it sure as hell feels more like
 an unsatisfactory career
 than i feel like an unsatisfactory teacher.
 
 

Enough for Today

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

essay graphic done
 by seventy-five percent:
 mission accomplished