Overheard in Homeroom

Eyebrows are way down my list

of things about which to be concerned--

as a matter of fact, they

don't make the list at all,

but in room 305 at 7:40 a.m.

they constitute a crisis

as the girl looks at her reflection

in a compact and

brushes and tweezes,

while I, on the other side of 

the large desk, ponder

the difference between an

85 and an 88.

"Eyebrows are sisters, not twins," 

another girl offers, as I mumble

metaphor quietly.

So it goes, different orbits

but still the same

rumination and brooding, 

insistence on what is important,

things that concern us so 

at one point in life making way

for others unpredicted,

as I smile and thin lines

frame my eyes, my pen

loops two green eights,

and I raise one uncorrected

brow (one brother?), if not

in solidarity, then at least

in insight. 

Hard Time

No one tells me what to do,

you tell me no but I do it anyway,

'cuz I'm my own person,

the student says amid the

familiar desks, chairs, windows,

grubby floor tiles. He is a

shape, too: a box in a seating chart,

a check in a column, a lump at a desk,

all hard angles, sounding off

his song that he would swear is

unique in its singular note

of defiance, saying I AM--

the walls and the floors

have heard it all before,

small-room big talk

that rings out and dissipates

like chalk erased into

clouds of choking dust,

shouting it out over others' heads,

brazen morning orator issuing

forth from his rocky outcrop,

this risk-taker, cliff diver,

reckless driver, nothing without

his audience, sycophant circle

minions for each other,

thug-lite insubordination brothers,

soon to be free from this

sentence of kindergarten to twelfth,

hard time on the inside.

Stuff my students say

Me: The next play we will read is Fiddler on the Roof.

Student: Why is he on the roof?


**************


Student: Extended metaphors? This writing isn't realistic. No guys think in extended metaphors!

Me: Well, I do.

Student: Well, then you're a keeper.