Why Do You Want to Be a Teacher?

I have been everything.

The commentary track

to the dark comedy

of American History

I provided without solicitation.

The blue hair with winter rain

in it was mine, and I

was the one who came empty handed

to Geometry

that you passed with a D.

You could count on me 

to read aloud The Diary

of Anne Frank

or my fiction

about a man whose body falls

asleep one limb at a time

until he can’t get out of bed one morning

and everyone decides he’s not

worthy of their love.

I sang tenor in your choir, sang

the national anthem before the ball games,

but unless you grabbed me by the arm

I wouldn’t stand from my desk

for the pledge of allegiance 

(not even once) in high school.

I opened up owl pellets

every time you asked

and from these wretched globes

I put together a thousand 

warped skeletons of small mammals

with a hundred mandibles

left over.

You wished you had a thousand of me,

you’d tell my mom;

and then we’d go up the hall and you’d

make her cry 

as you put it bluntly,

you’d never had such a lazy student.

My head is a thing I kept

against the window on long bus rides,

usually with spit.

If you looked me in the eye and asked

me to explain why I felt that way,

to elaborate on my answer,

it really meant something.

There isn’t anyone

I don’t want to save,

no point of view

I can’t find myself in.

For everyone 

who takes a seat in my class

I know

has been in an invisible rain

of violets and skulls.

I want to be the friendly monk

with a stained-glass haircut

who sits with them and listens.

​

By Chris Prewitt