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GOOD ADVICE

don’t rub your eyes,
don’t pull at your skin

apply sunscreen
when you go outside

she points to the
spots on her thighs

sneak to the bathroom
use up her foundation

pound my pores
into submission

freckles are private
kisses from God

I once had a tight
body like that;

holding the moisture,
the buoyancy of her

youth in my bones
do not be selfish

with what is sacred
kill the thief

with daggers;
I suppose a mirror

will do instead,
mother said

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The Best Teacher

First day of class,
I sit on top of the desk,
swinging my legs.
Can’t bring myself to slip
behind the table,
where my prim teachers
used to sit, their coffee mugs laced
with whatever secret elixir
got them through the day. 

I stare out at rows of blank faces
under baseball caps
and beaded headbands,  
their smartphones held
like small glowing hymnals
before their bowed blond heads.
I call out their names,
Kim, Tim, Chad, Brad—
they all sound the same
to me.

Write about something terrible
that happened to you, I instruct,
something so awful
you can’t remember it without flinching.
Something humiliating, something sad.

She comes up to me after class
confused about the assignment—
she says, nothing bad
has ever happened to her—
no lost puppies,
no bullies on the bus,
no groping uncles—
no friends gunned down
at the corner store.
“I’m blessed,” she confides
like it’s a secret book
she hugs close to her chest.

I gaze into those clear eyes,
at that beautiful, unmarked face,
those too-straight teeth
flashing me with their
brand of confidence—
Can anyone’s life,
however short,
be so devoid of pain?
Is she in denial, or am I?
And for a moment I feel
a sense of divide wider
than our ethnic origins—
I feel both disdain and wonder
for such oblivious
innocence. At the same time,
I want to tell her it’s all insane—
how we cling to pain
as the best teacher.

But that’s the lesson plan—
and I need five hundred words by Friday.
Exasperated, I tell her,
borrow someone else’s trouble,
or use your imagination.
She sashays back down the aisle,
none too pleased with my advice—

And I hear the urgent call
of that blank screen waiting
back in my TA’s office—
Suddenly I feel blessed, too—
and there’s nothing wrong with that,
nothing at all.

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A Hand Not My Own

I could have been born anywhere,
in any era. Instead of growing up
in Virginia, safe in my small town except
for the occasional comment about my nose
and how my people killed Jesus.

I could have been born across the ocean
like my father who never learned to say
“the” without it sounding like “zee.”

I could have spent my early years
in a Polish ghetto, not a nursery school
on Wentworth Avenue with Miss Pearl
and her assistant, Miss Edna, who only
scolded me once, when I knocked
Ben’s metal lunchbox off a table.

I didn’t have to end up
in a two-story house
on a tree-lined street
instead of Auschwitz.

And sometimes when
I am feeling both grateful
and guilty, I consider
how fortune is no less random
than a number drawn from a hat,
how a hand not my own picked me,
to live in this place at this time.