Excerpted From Lessons for a Fourth Grade Class: A Curriculum of Poems
The Toothpaste Press, 1982
Mary Molyneux Abrams, SBC '86
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Grammar will be cut short, due to the space flight today. The janitor is bringing in the t.v. set. For homework, pages nine and ten, read Mr. Saw and Mr. Seen and know the difference between them both. Roger, Mr. Saw Seen nine ten blast off. Over and hunchback janitor out on T-minus 60 seconds and counting. Holding at T-minus 20 seconds. Better go to the bathroom now. And you get back and he is gone up and up in a capsule so tiny fading to clouds and a simulation narrated by garbled voices. If he crashes, smashes, burns to smithereens, it is your fault. You are to blame, for not seeing him off. |
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They rebuilt Hiroshima. (Lightning, if only out of pity, rarely strikes the same spot twice.) So, when they rebuilt Hiroshima they built it where it had been before. They rebuilt London. (The mosquito bites twice and again. It buzzes above us and ruins our sleep while filling its body to bursting with blood.) They rebuilt London after the swelling went down. The tissue of the scar grows thicker than the skin. The earth has learned to tolerate the sky. And man persists- Adapting by not adapting, rejecting acceptance, testing all patience... And sticks out his tongue in the face of oblivion screaming Catch me you old gorilla fart C'mon! |
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Fish are as smart as they are fun to catch. Trout do tricks with no one to teach them. They float on their backs in Lake Erie all the time. Tunas swallow thermometers whole, swim around the ocean taking temperatures. (Soon we'll send a monkey to Neptune with a tuna and find out exactly how cold it gets there.) Factories recruit all kinds of fish to test the effects of waste in water. Attractive ones work in offices, with doctors and dentists, helping to keep clients quiet. And most important fish support the fishing industries of all countries free and communist. |
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We are boy, girl boy, girl seated in alphabetical order. I am in the back row, where I have been for over eight months. The bulletin boards change with the seasons and the holidays. Everything else stays the same. Everything is so familiar, I could go to school blind. I don't notice the world is blurred. I think the world is just that way. I cannot see the problems on the board. How can I answer to what I cannot see? There is only one answer. Glasses. Unfashionable, tortoise-shell, cat-eye glasses with little flecks of gold in the corners. They look dumb on me. I am teased. How can I concentrate on the board knowing I look like an idiot? How can I answer to how I look answering? For the first time, I see every little pebble in the driveway, every ball of cat-hair on the carpet, the thickness of my mother's toenails, the burnt-orange crud in the ears of children, and the brown roots of my teacher's blonde hair. For the first time, I see my own face from a distance in the mirror. I see how I have always looked and no one told me. No one told me about how I slouch, how my eyes are sunken in like an ape's, how my veins are visible through my skin, how my teeth are crowded and jutting out. We are boy, girl boy, girl lining up, eager, toppling over one another. I am in the back of the line, floundering for a place in order to be let loose on the playground. But there is no fun on the playground after glasses. |
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