Homeroom

Yesterday in the mail I got a package

from the Teachers’ union:  a magnet

to hang on the fridge with their motto—

I Cope—printed in white on a red apple

which is what I’ve been doing lately. 

Sometimes I chant ung namo

guru dev namo, feeling stupid, thinking

dignity, serenity, integrity

the way Ellen taught us, twisted in yoga. 

Other days it’s all I can do to board

the train going in the right direction,

rising mornings above the Gowanus projects

when the subway surfaces into sunlight,

thundering tin cars slicing through my head—

cranes, warehouses, piles of rock shooting past. 

The conductor punctuates stops with,

Stand clear the closing doors, and I wonder

what I’ll yell today when Curtis punches

Julio with all his might, straddling

his curled-up body because Abel Pena

told him Julio said, Your dad’s a crackhead,

which he was before he died.  But Julio,

he never speaks, which Curtis can’t know

because he rarely shows up to class.

And I wonder if this mix of anger

and sadness won’t eat me alive by June

since it’s only October and the ginkgoes

are just starting to drop their yellow fans,

ginkgo the only piece of information

I remember from sixth grade along with

that Jabberwocky poem.  I wonder what

these kids will piece out of this mess I’ve made—

what old journal entries or ancient assignments

they’ll keep.  The ginkgo leaves are everywhere

on the way from your house at sunrise

where I’ve unfurled my body against yours

to rock out this cracked world.  With each step

away from you I compress, late to school

in last night’s clothes, sloshing coffee, running

past the burnt out bodegas, endless

tire stores, the disapproving stare

of the squat principal.  I’m squashed with tension,

wound up, ready to spring.  The No. 2 pencil

I need to fill in attendance has been

stolen, Michael Cruz is already at me—

Ms. Meitner, this writing class is bootleg,

a word my kids use for anything cheap,

imitation, though right now I’d kill

for moonshine because Chris Roman has nothing

to write with and Maritza is complaining

her journal is wasted—meaning finished,

not drunk—and I yell, Silent journal writing

for ten minutes.  Come on kids, you should

know this by now.  I wait for my anger

to boil away, stop myself from telling

this turtle-shaped boy with enormous glasses

that he’s a bootleg student, stop myself

from losing my temper with Robert Castillo

who didn’t do his homework again,

though I won’t learn until December

that his mother throws him out of the house

every night from five to ten so she can

work as a prostitute so he really

has nowhere to do it.  And when Elias

unscrews his seat and wears it on his head

instead of starting the Do Now on the board,

I make him sit out in the hallway

the same way I will months later though one day

he turns to me and says, I used to get beat

with two by fours in the bathtub for

wetting my bed.  And Lloyd, who smells rank

this morning, every morning, comes up to me,

puts his red mirrored wraparound sunglasses

over my eyes, shouts, Yo, look at Ms. Meitner! 

She look mad dope, and I sit down heavily

in my wooden chair with Lloyd’s sunglasses on

letting chaos overtake 601 for the morning,

laughing at the kids laughing at me.