fourteen class hours
in three days. cold winter walk
to house of illness.
no breaks this weekend
as oldest tells project woes
(procrastination)
middle craves pancakes
but class again tomorrow
allows no bake time
(he’ll be up all night
holding a pail for baby
to give me this chance)
as it’s always been–
i work, work, work… he supports
(and we’re all winners)
midnight wake up call
evaluation nightmares
(scores that don’t suit me)
early morning grades
rush to school to hide from kids
and try to catch up
small knock at entry:
“Teacher, may I please enter?”
(a small scared boy waits)
“Are you new today?”
and his brother trails behind
with soft pink gloves on
“From Uganda, yes.”
my papers sit in piles
forgotten on desk
i show them downstairs
where free breakfast awaits them:
eyes big and grateful
“What brings you here, boys?”
they exchange frightened glances.
“For a better life.”
ungraded papers,
nightmares–they’re all meaningless
in comparison
at least they are here–
where with beauty they’ll begin
the life we all want
rain-forced overtime
and a club cancellation
poured on my evening
frazzled two incomes
shuffle life like laundry loads:
nothing’s ever clean
quick pasta in pan
(middle one waits for boil)
i mad-dash the town
make my appointment
where my essay’s dissected
by native speaker
who can’t tell me why
subjunctive is needed here
yet, not here (nor there)
disgruntled, i sit
choose the last row, and listen–
same two birds chirping
pecking the rest out
our Spanish words now swallowed
by extroversion
and i can’t do it
i cannot sit in this class
with my girls at home
i can’t speak Spanish
or use subjunctive bullshit
—just say what it is—
it’s like our lunch talk:
Midwest culture won’t allow
taking last cookie
and if you offer,
offer three times before, ‘Yes’
(no cookie for me)
so i leave the class
i walk out, i give up, lose
(win time with my girls
who ask for reading
aloud, in poems stories,
mine and theirs and ours)
and we read Spain poems
remember Gaudí’s madness
in place of our own
and that’s my Thursday
just like any other: lost,
but not forgotten
weekend leftovers
murmur an early Monday
in my groaning gut
technology blues
plague two classes, one meeting
forced into nonsense
data collection
begins my singular plan
till phone rings: sick kid
frazzled packing up
for a stomach flu faker
then two extra kids
but that is not all!
cross country registration
at the last moment
my middle girl runs!
two days a week, a new plan:
laps around the park
(he can cook dinner–
we’ll eat late like back in Spain,
shed this U.S. stress)
and i will run too–
take tree-lined tech-free views home
(run free, not ragged)
this is what i need
moments of full immersion
you give us so few
carve out each hour
fit in dialogue, writing
is it hard to see?
fish swimming upstream
we flail in your fishing line
unable to breathe
you could set us free
let the stream of words chase us
to our fluency
(it’s not your version,
but success lies in small bites
just give us a taste)
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.
i didn’t get a photo
of that bright face looking out from the crowd
of the circle of middle school spur-of-the-moment dancers
jamming to a Middle Eastern tune
with their white black brown faces
and her Latin American dress spinning out from under
a tunnel of happiness
there is no way
no possible way
my phone could have captured
the enraptured joy of that moment
of the confidence instilled back into my
fifth-grade-turned-sour timid child
who has found her place
in the oft-militaristic
ever-loving ever-respectful
intensity of love
that is this school
and when i see those
bright twelve-year-old eyes
shining back at me
because she knows i know
(to pain and back, we’ve been)
it is that moment of parenthood
that reminder of why we are parents
why we bring them into this world
and spend our Saturday nights inside a school
eating foods from around the world
listening to the intricate threads that sew together our humanity
why we love
why we live
why we still hope
for a better tomorrow
mi esperanza:
aquí el examen que
decide todo
(my hope in this test–
this testimony of life–
decides everything)
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