Valentine for My Fellow Teachers
–by Alison Seevak
Those days
when your students don't want to write,
when they tell you they want to make tortillas
out of Play-Doh, they want to play Candy Land,
they want to watch The Lion King again.
Really, they say, Pokémon is on.
We would rather be at our PlayStations
or doing anything else, but this.
They pass notes about you in languages you don't understand.
The only odes they'll write are to boogers.
But please, could you tell them how to spell it first?
They are bored, so bored.
Professional wrestling is much more interesting than this.
You kind of agree.
You kind of want to lay your head down
on the long table beside theirs.
Those days
when you wonder what kind of idiot
wants to be a writing teacher,
think of David, nine years old.
He didn't need anything as ordinary
as a pencil to make poems.
Someone told you he got thrown out of fourth grade
for lighting a fire in the boys' room.
You don't believe it.
Angel-faced boy, he sat next to you,
rounded safety scissors in hand,
folding a piece of red construction paper in half.
I know how to make a heart, he said.
I can show you.
First, you just cut a big teardrop.
Like this.
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