beliefs

System

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Dear System:

You are broken.
Some say beyond repair.
You let them fall into
cracks so wide they
can be seen from airplanes.
You ignore the best and brightest
to honor those who
slip easily into nonchalance.

You offer little.
You take more than we can give.
You let the parents
command the details of our profession
as if they’re our salvation.
You forget the long hours,
heavy with lack of sleep,
sick with worry like mothers
of all our lost children.

Yet we trust you.
We need your broken-down support.
Without you we wouldn’t be here
to hold their hands,
to guide them through addition,
subtraction, how to think, see, be.
So we must be grateful.
We must offer our gratitude
to the cracks, the nonchalance,
the helicopter parents.

What we cannot do.
What I cannot do
is allow you to beat down
the ones who love them best
the ones who trust you most
the ones who are our best and brightest
the ones I hope someday
you will repair yourself enough to see.

Película

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i send my camera
zoomed in and out
around our table of twelve
their words slip
like bubbles from their tongues
escaping into the heat
popping before i can catch them

drinks go to lips
songs emerge as naturally
as water flowing from the mountains
they have no idea
they are being filmed

sleep pushes at my eyelids
as the Taiwanese pasta
settles in my belly
but i could stay here forever
listening to the language
i crave to understand
immersing myself in the people
whose home i’ll never know

it is like a dream really
and i pinch myself awake
so full of life
they are so full of life
that no language
could define
just what my video
will never capture

To-Do List

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email daughter’s teacher
who doesn’t know how to read
pick up nuts
because i’m going crazy
learn Castilian Spanish
so i can speak to roommates
intervene in group work
for groups who won’t work
teach daughter to read
because schools don’t work
sit in meetings that don’t apply to me
so i can’t do my work
ride my bike to work
so i can see the moonset/sunrise
try to remember
that i cannot
make a list
that will quite
change the way the world works

Journal: September 11, 2001

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Dear Brittany, Tuesday, September 11, 2001 8:30 p.m.

I just keep hearing it. A line from a movie? A speech from a long-dead political leader? Or a description, so precise, so harsh, so true of this very day in the history of the world.

“A day that will live in infamy.”

I don’t even know where to begin. Should I repeat, in this journal, the story that I’ve heard from 20 journalists, seen video and photos of over 100 times, repeated in over 100 ways? Or, when I look back at this entry years from now, perhaps as a mother, a grandmother, a dying old woman, will the date alone strike a chord and bring back the terror of this day?

Will I be able to look back, many years from now, or will this journal be ashes in the rubble remaining from days of nuclear warfare?

I face the same questions as everyone else; the questions I ask my students to answer every time they read a story or write a paper: Who? What? Where? When?

WHY?

HOW?

Are these the keys to good writing, or unanswerable interrogations about our country, our world, our humanity?

No, I cannot answer today; maybe not ever. I stare blankly at the muted screen, its words that so quickly skid across the bottom, blurry to my tired eyes. I can’t listen anymore. I look at the seriousness of the journalists’ faces, the grave, reserved anxiety, unable to keep my thoughts on track. What track? Where am I going? Where are we going? The questions again, endless, like the questions you ask yourself when you’re reading a great story.

Only, this isn’t a story.

–KMV

Netbook

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the same book that binds us
tears us along the spine
where we’ve fallen into cracks
unseen by words on the page

if we could close the cover
or open up to page one
perhaps we could see
where the story would take us

instead we skim
unable to truly read
forgetting how without the words
we wouldn’t be here

Teach

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if eighty-five percent
of EVERYONE
actually did what they
were supposed to do
then we wouldn’t need
pay for performance.

we could just…
teach.
what a concept.

Words

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i sent the words
(there were clicks–
not yours)
i spent the time
(there were chips–
dark chocolate)

you didn’t respond
you couldn’t read
the words too thick
the chips already melted

you left them there for me
and i placed new words
under the light
words they shared in your absence

it was strange
having you walk in like that
not quite sure
if you should use your own words
or listen to ours

you waited
i wrote
(i always do)
you flipped off the light
that let them see
what i had written

in your usual manner
you ad-libbed
they laughed their usual laughs
but i managed to
feel less small
knowing they shared words with me

you stood in the back
video on
asking me a favor
(the chocolate
sitting in a back room
unrequested)

i took your center cut
put it in the microwave
and melted it for a perfect sundae

you won’t say a word
you will never know
just how warm
how perfectly cold
it tasted as i took my words
and swallowed them

The Cost of These Brownies

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handwritten prices
on the grocery list
categorizing ingredients,
a spouse’s scrupulous pen
(cocoa: $2.76
chocolate chips: $2.38
it goes on)

several summer nightmares,
a bitter blog post,
and the hollowness
that can only come
with the absence of words

their bright faces
and innocent remarks,
the commentary carried
down the corridor,
begging for more

the bland baked cakes
from someone’s mix
hand in hand with
Friday’s sacred sweet desire

all the times
that can’t be added up
with calculators
of when they made a day,
saved a life,
or satisfied a fix

the small hands
that crack the eggs,
the small voice
that recites the recipe,
reminding me
once again
that from first bite
to last,
i am giving a taste
of chocolate
with an immeasurable price.

August (2011) Daughters

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Riona

Five. FIVE. five…
you wear the pink taffeta dress
(pattern handed down
for fifty years)
a gathered waste,
scalloped pockets and sleeves,
plastic pearls to complete the couture.

you jump in and out of fountains,
climb plastic playground steps,
pretend with perfect attitude
(that encompasses all you are)
to blow the absent candles from your cake

we move from playing with new gifts
on hardwood (you offer me a pillow)
to party number two, where
you surround yourself with
breaking-down children and ask
only that i roast you a marshmallow
in the lightning-flash sky
and circle of warmth

you are five.
you dash to the car in the
pitch-black, too-far-from-city night,
your row of new lip balms in palm,
and before you will sleep,
you divide them evenly amongst sisters,
your generous heart more beautiful
than your perfect pink taffeta dress.

Mythili

it’s been a year, and
baby teeth are gone,
replaced by no-finger-sucking
straight white incisors
that have sent Blankey
to a closeted grave
with their grown-up appearance.

you have school friends now
who you won’t let go.
you know the way down the corridors,
will soon show baby sister,
and, as always,
you speak quite frankly
about the condition of your classroom,
the behavior of other students,
and your ability to stay on task.

how could these two adult teeth
bring deeper wisdom
to the little girl
who, from birth,
could already see the world
in a light
the rest of us can’t see?

Isabella

i find pictures of you
at five, six,
(pudgy cheeks and tiny teeth)
and look into your pale hazels,
your over-freckled cheeks,
hold you against me,
your head now at my shoulder,
and i know
i know
(though i’m afraid to write it now)
you are no longer a little girl.

you are my oldest,
will always be first,
will always move from one stage
to another before them,
will be the one to induce the most fear,
the most intense kind of love,
a kind i cannot describe here
(or to them)
one that is shared from those
moments in our babymoon
to those moments now when
you understand what they don’t,
when you give me the look
a reflection of my expression,
you, a shadow of me
who stands at my shoulder,
ready to grow.

Tabula Rasa

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before this great institution
you have a tabula rasa—
you could start fresh,
show the world innovation,
speak the language of the plants.

but in your usual
conglomeration of unspoken words,
you have filled your slate
with water-sucking weeds
stealing the words from native beauty.