
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
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