Home of the Wildcats

A tall handsome boy hands me his transfer slip.
“So you like the ‘Mona Lisa’? he says,
Surveying the prints above my desk.
“Why yes,” I reply, impressed by his interest.
“I think it sucks,” he says.
“On what do you base your criticism,” I ask.
“I saw it,” he says, “and it’s little.”
“True,” I agree, “but didn’t you get 
A provocative sense of the unconscious of Woman?
Perhaps even of archetypal wisdom?”
“Of course,” he says without batting an eye, “but
Something worth that much ought to be bigger . . .”

          Once I asked why so much money kept going
          Into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine
          Why it didn’t go into playgrounds and schools 
          For the kids throwing stones at out tour bus
          “Who do you think you are?” Dad fired back,
          “Jesus Christ?” I don’t see you sending your
          allowance to the Puerto Ricans.”

“Then there’s the Venus de Milo,” he says,
“She doesn’t even have any arms. What good is it?”
Time schedules itself into my day
Stamping its thin precise hand on my plans . . .
“Henry was still there,” I tell the class,
“A rose light filled that August evening
As The Pond rippled toward me out of its secret source
Into this tiny Bufferin bottle . . .”
“Dang man,” he says, kicked back in his chair,
“You talk about him as if he’s God.”
Their laughter strips me from my eyes.
My answers remain questions.
Errors are expectations not entirely expected.
The calendar will soon say May but I may never.
Last year Hemingway won out over Fitzgerald
Because the sentences are shorter.
“Fly Fuck the Whorld,” says this year’s 
Official Theme Paper Plane
As I leave another stone
At the door of each of their instant minds.

          And a bell like the sound of one hand clapping

I keep Manuelita after class
Her father says the family must go back to Mexico
She wants to finish high school in America
Just one more year
She wants to be something
Violet sweater creeping up her tummy roll
She doesn’t know what
“Please help,” she had written at the end
Of her composition on ‘Self-Reliance.’
“My sister’s boyfriend is cheating on her.
If I tell, I will hurt her
And also break the trust he has in me.”
Manuelita is wrapped deeply in her loyalties
Hot and soft inside as a peasant grandmother
Her lips are fat
Her friends are thin and go with boys
On Saturday night she braids dark wet strands
From their temples over their heads
Then pulls the braids so they dry wide and loose
This braiding is her pride.
One night her sister talked her into sneaking out
The boys were Mexican
Although the word were said in English 
For this was an American thing to do
They went for a ride
That was all
Her sister came back later and didn’t get caught
But she got her father’s belt across her thighs
“The truth is always best,” I say.
She looks up from the close world of her text
Fingernails like chewed moons
Tongue tripping over the language of freedom
A frightened piñata filled with honor
Everyone taking a poke.

          The nets of morning begin to fray
          Into the threads of evening
          Still I catch myself believing
          The rope across the Valley of Thunder loves my feet
          Suddenly the fractured air comes together
          And my feet awaken on an invisible wire
          Connected to the tardy bell . . . « back