Texas Education


Give it here, Señor 
clucks the frump, a metallic daisy
hanging on each side of her head.
The gracious Pakistani boy gives up
a silver crescent from his ear.

He cuts pep rally
and fills that requirement hiding
in nonfiction aisles–espionage,
the Coelacanth and mysterious
moving coffins of Barbados.

At 10:55 he’s offered oblong
cheeseburger pizza and a sign
on the lunch room door wants to know
if he thinks of suicide.
A squad of tenth-grade

Hispanic girls push him aside,
squinting at the sign to see themselves
in the glass and assess the blue
powdered sex bruising 
their chocolate eyes.


Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review 
#29, Fall/Winter 2007

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