A waswerian: for my eighth-grade Language Arts teacher, Mrs. Cunningham,
who made us memorize all the helping verbs in the English language
As the evening janitor turns off the last corridor light,
the elementary desks glow from the lamppost, dusk
is a mirror of childhood, showing your face as you are
to the world. A wizened tree taps a window three times:
Are you there, boy? Are you still? The hall is just a
meeting place for those who measure their worth in inches.
Was your friend, once, the next-door boy with the
widow’s peak, freckled and wearing the same sweat-stained shirt,
Were our memories measured by dead flashlights?
During the fire, the neighborhood moved into a school gym.
Be a nighttime city in between bleachers, a
fidgeting boy ate Big Macs by a sleepy-eyed woman, the town