my first orgasm
given to a boy now dead
life’s too fucking short
my childhood park
lit under a cloudy moon
is what calms me down
i’d walk the world
to find my way back to you
eighteen years in, love
we’re all grown up now
me a woman, you a man
let’s let bygones… be
there’s no other moon
to shine city-bright tonight
just my love, your love
debt
Two Too Many
end of day feet up
hours on end of walking
then pickup, dinner…
day two of two jobs
the runaround’s new to me
exhaustion takes time
the girls say it best:
hang the dolls on bike rack noose
and call it a day
Anywhere but Here
with windows wide: write.
because you’ve missed my poems, love.
since yesterday’s dawn
girls in sun’s shadow
as she announces her move.
life: cycle in, out.
you know you’ve missed me
my “seven-likes” followers
’cause i didn’t write
you count me daily
amongst the regular loves
that make us a life
and i was just born.
(it was like i was just born
the day i met him)
’cause seventeen years
can’t be measured in mountains
or wildflowers
or whining children.
but in the steps we oft take
on our way back home
and in sunsets. Sun!
lighting my way across love
across city, life.
cutting down this ‘hood
into what it’s meant to be:
scraped, demolished, lost.
circular i am
because that’s how tires spin:
neverending globe
that brings us back home
wherever that home may be.
anywhere but here.
Sunny Skies Ahead
he comes home with clouds
hovering over new joy
(where we could be free)
but then i must ask:
is freedom found in money?
so hard to answer
those without know best:
lack of money’s a prison
choking month to month
those with all know best:
too much money is a trap
biting claws of greed
it was just enough
for shoes, road trips, water parks
just enough to breathe
i want that freedom–
monthly-cycle jail-cell break
so far from the clouds
Swimming in It
bad college advice
from those who are still in school
and haven’t paid debt
trapped in the banks’ lies
for an unsure future life
they might not afford
tell them: study hard
work your ass off, all four years
with a paying job
choose a cheaper school
or a major that pays out
once you graduate
but would they listen?
their biggest concern: when’s lunch?
debt lost on all ears
Full Circle
this news sent so quickly in the midst
of my latest sacrifice (summer school)
brings it all together–
the twelve plus years of parenthood
where each of us stepped out of our careers
to stay home
to be there, wholly be there,
for every waking moment of their childhood
(it was mostly him,
a remorse i will carry
long after they have left the house)
and three years back,
when i made that choice
to carry this family to Spain,
and all the weight of it
that i have carried since
(was it the right choice?
was it worth the debt?
will we lose our house?
are the girls’ schools good enough?
have they lost every speck of Spanish?)
all of it comes full circle with his text:
I got the job.
The REAL job.
The DREAM job.
the job he’s been waiting for
since he stepped out of the barracks
and into The Real World,
where he was offered contract after contract
(no benefits, no real hope)
and was better than most of the company employees
(and better than any man you will ever meet)
and here we are.
seventeen years into the marriage.
twelve and a half into parenthood.
a stay-at-home chef, hairstylist,
chauffeur, housekeeper, computer technician,
financial analyst, tax adviser, veteran,
TELECOM TECH.
here we are, dream-of-dreams,
full circle, lifetime opportunity later.
and it was so worth it.
so, so, so worth it.
Call to Prayer
my morning prayer call:
please end these flooding puddles
water can destroy
our house ruined thrice
our hope so oft washed away
ponds where there was lawn
but look at the view
the first-world rainy view
to make my request
after the drenched walk
to a surprise bonus check
to start my summer
it’s like He listened
by midday? pools and blue skies
walking can save souls
The Same Zip Code
we make home visits to welcome freshmen
who haven’t set foot in our school.
on the drive we discuss gentrification,
how these kids are coming across town
to our school because they think it’s better
(but it’s so much better than the remnants
of gangs that linger in their northwest ‘hood,
in the high school that hasn’t caught up
with the white money-chasers)
inside the first house, a blond bombshell
(shy as a country field mouse) lets us into
her gutted bungalow, replete with
granite counters all around, tells us she chooses us
because the people at our school were nicer
than the pompous competitor next to City Park
we make our way back to the south side
and step into a mansion built
on top of one of Denver’s many scrapes,
with oriental rugs leading from
hallway to music room to never-ending kitchen,
with a nice mother and a moody teenage boy
who grunts responses to questions
(because manners can’t be bought)
and then, within the same zip code of
block after block of mansions that
have all but stomped out the middle class,
we pull up to our last stop:
The Red Pine Motel,
settled along Broadway
between a bar and a pot shop.
in a tiny apartment without a table,
a man stands eating a bowl of soup,
his hand half broken and bandaged,
his pony tail tied at the nape of his neck,
his high-heeled wife potty training
her three-year-old in the adjacent room.
“you can come and look, do your check,
do what you need to do.”
we exchange glances.
do they they think we’re the cops?
are they used to this?
my colleague reassures him that this is a friendly visit,
that we have papers and t-shirts
and hope for a better tomorrow
(God save us all)
we sit on the bench-like singular piece of furniture
in the kitchen/living/dining room,
(no more than 100 square feet)
with a miniature gas stove and not a single
speck of a counter, granite or otherwise
the boy is running late
and both parents engage in disgruntled talk
when he arrives,
and they plain as day tell us what he’s like
and he plain as day answers.
they use words like imaginative.
engaging.
photographic memory.
and the little girl sports her
oversized South Future Rebel t-shirt,
and the uncle waits outside and begs
to have a t-shirt too,
so proud are they of sending their boy
on the one mile
(the one million mile)
walk between their dwelling and
the grandiose Italian architecture
that will be his high school,
where he will walk past
block after block of mansions
in the same zip code
through the disappearing middle class
into the institution
that will grant him a future
or place him right back
into the thin line of poverty
that hovers over our city.
and this is what it’s like to be a teacher
in today’s world.
The Buck that Burns Across My Back
It is 14:52 on the eve of ESL summer school. We have spent an entire day, AN ENTIRE DAY, planning for a sixty-five-minute lesson from curriculum that we first laid our eyes on this morning after a completely different and unrelated ENTIRE DAY presentation of curriculum yesterday. And at this moment, he announces that tomorrow, for the first day, the schedule will be “different.” That all our lesson planning has just been flushed down the toilet that has become our society.
I cried on my two-mile walk this morning. Not because it was too hot, or the views of the Perfect Denver Neighborhood weren’t impeccable. Or because I had to teach summer school for four weeks to pay for summer camp for my girls for ONE. But because of an article I read about the University of Phoenix, of all things. About how, in five years, their enrollment has decreased by fifty percent. And starting July 1st, a new law will require that they prove that their graduates make enough money to pay back the loans that their for-profit greed has forced them to take.
I was thinking these things as I made my way across town to the locale of this year’s grant-funded summer school, the University of Denver, a NONprofit institution with gorgeous grounds and transgender bathrooms and air conditioning and classes that start at $1200 a CREDIT.
And how screwed I am. Not because I think that the University of Phoenix is so damn amazing that it could grind up the 100-year-old trees of Denver’s “Ivy League of the West.” But because I have to do this. I have to do this damn summer school and have a part time job as an adjunct-but-never-real professor, that I have to bend my will to the beck and call of disorganized, incapable-of-communicating administrators, all for the buck that burns across my back.
That the measly $600 that I sometimes earn in a month at the University of Phoenix is sometimes all that keeps us from bowing down to debt.
And when he comes in at 13:33 and tells me that they haven’t been able to contact more than 11 students for our summer school, I ask him if it will be cancelled, if I will be shit out of luck on all counts this Tuesday. “No worries… it’s already accounted for… a grant. No pasa nada.” And his blue eyes and Argentinian accent are slappable. “And who paid for it?” I demand, the third time in two months I’ve asked, a question he’s dodged until this moment. “Well… you have. The taxpayers. The READ Act.”
And it all circles back to me. The University of Denver grounds I stand on that have been manicured by professional gardeners. The school I could never afford to attend, nor will any of my children even think of applying to. The public education that is filled and funded with so many holes, twenty-seven gorgeous textbooks, full-color photos and activities galore, a slew of classroom supplies including an electric pencil sharpener, that 11 students will take advantage of … all the rest? To waste.
The “for-profit” evil University of Phoenix that has allowed my family to break free of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle that is a teacher’s salary, that allowed us to live on a pittance in Spain, that has allowed me to… breathe.
What is an education worth? Why won’t parents commit to a forty-five minute bus ride for free materials, expert teachers, individualized classes, and free breakfast and lunch? Why won’t the University of Denver be asked to publish data on how many students graduate with a super-fancy psychology degree and start their salaries at $22,000? Why won’t our government ever just see that EDUCATION SHOULD BE FREE??
This is my Tuesday. Let the games begin. The Hunger Games, real world style.
A Visit from Charles Schwab
a day off of work
for three hours with students
plus!–small donation
refugees’ lives
summarized in two chapters,
questions that plague them
if they saw their day,
their actual student day,
they might learn something
instead, they murmur
over plot complexities
and students’ English
they might realize,
when to mansions they return,
the true complex plot:
they can’t give answers
to high school reading questions
nor inequity
work, in equities:
invest in students, not stocks.
buy them a future.
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