Roadkill on the Path to Salvation

(I selected this post to be featured on my blog’s page at Poetry Blogs.)

I teach Spanish now, and at school that translates:
someone who is good at this one language,
as if I live in a piece of luggage packed
with workaday words and plain phrases,
as if there's a black cloud of vowels and R trills
buzzing around me like malaria mosquitoes,
and no one can see past the swarm. Sometimes I talk
about a good book I'm reading. If it's a novel, my reward
is a smile from the gal with a teaching award
and a look that says, "Good Señora,
keep trying!" If it's poetry, smiles collapse
like small countries to a coup, new topics
queue up. Sometimes English teachers trade
daft looks when I name William
Carlos Williams, then clear off to budget
the yearly author visit. When "poem class"
comes around (also once a year), our Language Arts team
won't let me near. They shut classrooms tight,
pull the dusty sheet off that famous Frost piece,
as if revealing a prize trophy from glory days,
then beat kids with it so hard, most want to take
any road but the one that guy is on.


(in Rattle #36 Winter 2011)