By Valerie A. Smith
It can't be what we're teaching. It could be
what we're not teaching. Could be the space,
lack air of, cement block walls painted cream.
Our fingers run through the grooves like icing.
Maybe it’s the food, the fights and rights to eat.
My college students ask to learn the real world.
I teach this job with taxes. Lessons come from
feeling good about ourselves, hoping in the end
they’ll feel good about themselves. Does it help
I plan to teach you in my sleep? I bring you up
at dinner parties, walked you to the counselor,
sat with you over plagiarism, offered us both
the chance not to climb the disciplinary ladder.
Haven’t I taught you to keep your mother from
taking your covid check? My lectures on ethos
are boring. Our class is the safest place to sleep.
Students should hide under their desks, behind
computers stowed under metal frames. We learn
with weaponry scattered about. We don't teach
enough about our feelings. We learn too much.
Our losses lie in wait to figure it out themselves.
Mass shootings beget mass murder. Mass is not
Catholic here. A tome of religion enters the class.
The bindings we reach for hang us by a thread.
Here, there's a hallway and an extra wall. I hope
my children never learn about it. They've been
hiding all their lives. Been taught the futility
of silence against the body’s bloody lessons.
Valerie A. Smith’s first book of poems, Back to Alabama, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications. She has a PhD from Georgia State University and an MA from Kennesaw State University where she currently teaches English. Her poems appear in Radix, Aunt Chloe, Weber, Spectrum, Obsidian, Crosswinds, Dogwood, Solstice, Oyster River Pages, and Wayne Literary Review. Above all, she values spending quality time with her family.
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