Back to School

Here's a poem from my newest chapbook, Not Me: Poems About Other Women. Just 10 more days to preorder. You can click here to order or for more information.

From the Imaginary Journals of Venetia Burney
the math-loving English girl who named Pluto

 

In class, I fly on the backs of winged numbers —
with computations, I can have my plum cake
and eat it too, both the thrill and the comfort
of equality — 12 – 3, 8 + 1, 45 ÷ by 5 —
so many ways to get to nine,
or any number that I like.

But even from my silver hill of symbols and signs,
I sense the warped orbit of fear and scratching here.
Running my finger over the raw letters carved
into my wooden desk, I trace the initials of a girl
I once saw trip a fellow student then
apologize with her lips shaped
in a honeysuckle smile.

Today our teacher drones about Plato’s ethics while I braid
strands of my hair with the hair of the other girls —
bully, witness, victim — a woven rope to read
like braille and bruises when I can’t sleep.

I hear a new planet has been found. Would life be better,
more fair, on the edge of the galaxy?

Maybe in places where only dim starlight shines,
appreciation for each pale ray is multiplied.

This poem originally appeared in The Wild Word.