the New Year looms near
only two resolutions:
make friends with sis; write.
loss
The Runs
second thoughts run deep
two hundred dollars later
and him always mad
my bestie takes blame
(her kitten was first, she claims)
but this is my fault
how deep does love run?
for my oldest: no-phone prize
for us all: pet love
sometimes i wonder
how hovering hurt runs deep
to pick our pockets
if i could keep her
(and keep his heart with me too)
we’d run through the depths
The Blaring Results Of…
The fire alarm went off just after the minute bell, thirty seconds before finals were to start. I had already arrived early enough to stand in line and sign out my district final. I had taken the time to organize them name by name on every other desk, ready for the students to walk in, find their place, and write their best essay of this semester.
When the alarm blared into our ears, I told the kids what door to walk out. I grabbed my coat, ready to wrap some warmth around this December Monday. I locked my classroom door, thinking about the security of the tests.
And I entered the line. The students-ready-to-give-up line. The teachers-wondering-if-there’d-be-enough-time-now-for-finals line.
And in their arms, like infants ready to suckle? Tight against their chests like their lives depended upon the survival of a few stacks of lined booklets?
Their district finals.
“Where are your tests? Did you leave them in your room??”
Like I had committed a cardinal sin.
And this moment, more than any other, is why I think our society has completely fallen apart. No way our school, our city, our fire department would plan a fire drill the Monday morning moment before finals would begin.
So this could be REAL. We could be walking out of our school into a bitter cold standstill for hours as we wait for the beautiful firemen to rush five blocks in their blaring white truck to SAVE OUR LIVES.
And I left, God forbid, the tests in that damn room.
(Of course it was an error. Of course they were doing construction in the gym that set off the alarm. Of course they adjusted our schedule, making the day twenty minutes longer than planned, cutting into our lunch, our grading time, our collection of children from school, forcing us to stand in line again, forcing our children to stand like common prostitutes on the corner because their mother couldn’t arrive on time, all because of the security of that damn test.)
Of course I’ll give up my planning period tomorrow to catch up.
But I will not carry that test like it’s my baby. I have enough babies. Three of my own and thousands more. Their words are worth more than what the district (the society) asked them to write in sixty minutes. Their lives are worth more than the security of this test.
Our lives are worth more than the security of a TEST.
Someday, I hope, we will realize this.
Books and Love
On the drive home, we are missing our carpool companions thanks to the relentless militarism of their middle school, and I take advantage of this moment to hop skip and jump just shy of downtown.
Me: “We all need books. This is the only library in the city that has Spanish ones.”
I: “I’m only reading this one.”
R: “That’s MY book borrowed from MY teacher that YOU stole.”
Me: “There are 100,000 books here. Can’t you choose a different one?”
Both: “Not until she gives me that one.”
I give up. I take four escalators to the top floor of the library in the center of the city, the epicenter of the Latino world, where I stare down four shelves of outdated, bindings-falling-off Spanish books, trying to find one that is 1) at my level 2) not a hundred years old 3) interesting. What a bunch of bullshit this is. ¡No me jodas!
We ride home in silence. Semi-silence. They read. I listen to La Busca de Felicydad while R groans about my Spanish audiobooks. We sit in traffic and I miss the turn because I’m listening to how a small fatherless black boy has to witness his stepfather beating the shit out of his poor mother whose education was denied by her father so her brother could go to school and I am thinking about how fucking entitled my white children are and how unentitled my refugee students are who learn the new vocabulary phrase, “take it off” and all the girls write, for their “demonstration of knowledge” sentence, “As soon as I get home, I take off my hijab.” Like it’s a burden, a weight, a freedom they wait all day to release, and my own kids are fighting over a damn book.
But bless them all the same. For loving to read. For fighting over a damn book.
And this is America, I think, as we drive past the wealthiest mall with its block of Christmas-lit trees. As R settles into her hopeful view of the book I will leave for her. As I will rise and teach tomorrow, perhaps a new phrase such as, “What gives us hope?” And they will post pictures of their childhood in the refugee camp and my girls will ask me to read them a story (because they’re never too old) and I will drive the carpool home and hope for a better America. One without militarism. Without fear.
With books and love. Books and love. Where we can all learn what it means to “take it off.”
To find a Spanish book on the fourth floor of the library. To read. To give in to sisterly needs. To remember that we are all refugees.
That we all seek shelter. In a book. A drive. A removal of a hijab.
In each other’s arms.
In Comparison
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
Friday Night Lights
what angers me now
is her quick accusation
that we just don’t care
bullied confessions
took control of my first class
(undocumented)
yet, she’s tracking us–
collecting district data
to prove we’re worth it
you cannot track kids
who’ve been shoved into lockers
with tablet data
one day she’ll see this
or continue on her path
of domination
either way, we win:
My lesson’s lost, i tell them
—but we needed this—
i actually hear
the harsh words they say to me
i truly listen
but she can’t see that
it’s not in her statistics
and therefore i fail
what angers me most
is how i love, love, love them
and how she doesn’t
Neither Here Nor There
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
My Friday Night
a red solo cup
atop a stack of boxes
life is moving on
Dawning
with the house half packed
my morning commute haunts me
no more sunrise walks
Leaves
stomach tumbling
with sick realization:
innocence now lost
just three days ago
she was climbing up the limbs
of youth’s bulging tree
her arms strong and thin
(but what was bulging inside,
ready to burst free?)
to know that she knows
kills me from the inside out
(as a mom, a slave)
failures drop like leaves
of youth’s impending autumn
to crunch with my woes
i’ve always loved leaves
(but there’s no satisfaction
in this kind of crunch.)
she searches hollows
to fill a hollow within
(i’ve searched too. in vain.)
to know that she knows
brings every dark doubt to light
(no tree-limbed safe-net)
what will she climb next?
(the strong arms of a stranger
who will leave no leaves…)
a mom’s greatest fear:
to lose children to branches
that i cannot reach
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