(english)

Sometimes I think
I took my English
teachers too much
to heart, the way
that good girls do,
the ones who love
to read.

The English teacher
I had in high school
whose class I always
cut,
who took me in –
or took me on –
pressing words
into my essay
so she could win
a prize.
I didn’t care
too much myself –
they ran it in
the paper.
Sent me to club
meetings to read
out loud.
I didn’t feel a fraud,
only that I was
trying to be good
though i didn’t
really know how.

The way it is
when I think
I should punctuate
poems, looking
for sentence structure
where there is none.
For syntax where
there is only synergy.

I’ve done what
I could,
more than was
advisable.
To make this peace,
to find my way
down the corridors
of commas &
semi-semi-colons.

I took them too much
to heart, because
they loved the things
I loved, & were
the only ones I
ever saw who did.
Not knowing that
I could never live
in their close rooms,
where their dying
mothers lingered
so long that they
used up two
lives.

I was always
more selfish
than that,
a whore by
some people’s
standards –
& glad of it.

2/12/99