I’ve never admitted how it altered me.
I try not to think about it—the spring
the junior dropped out of school
after wearing a wire so the police could cuff
Mr. Cawley—led him out of the high school
down the long beige corridor of B-Hall
past the AP History class where I sat
with my textbook open to some European War,
trying not to think about my confusion
when I stood, the May before, in Mr. Cawley’s classroom,
as he held my book report on In Search of History.
The wish is always that we’d walk in,
Give each other bear hugs,
Tight and unencumbered,
Nothing of my body shameful,
That he’d cradle my face in his palms
And smile wide, in awe of who I’ve become,
That I’d go to him twice a year
To help me unknot something of my heart
When it broke.
By DAVID LEHMAN
The month, shortest of the year, least popular, ends,
and on the radio there’s “Midnight Sun,” a concept
worthy of a Ramos Gin Fizz, if you have the ingredients,
After Rafael Alberti
I noticed the canas sprouting from her scalp, I noticed the sky,
I noticed the engines hum, I noticed my heartbeat, and the breeze.
Nunca fui a Iowa.
My mother tells me I gave her canas, and now I have my own.
Mi bisabuela worked los campos, says she was once Iowan
Nunca vi Iowa.
I cannot remember a time when I was not chosen last.
That and the great, timeless subjects: music, weather, war.
Wounds are openings through which presence shines through.
The child in the doll, Christ in the wafer, the ocean in a droplet.
This is a torn map of the forsaken world.
There are lines even wolves cannot cross.
Every voice an epitaph, then a little tune
from the neighbor’s garden apartment
suggesting a rondo, or circle of fifths.
Plato said the soul is a perfect circle.
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