Prepare your heart

They told me to prepare

my heart; so, I bought

a store brand marinade

and 7 bell peppers.

I made an incision just beneath

the ribcage, reached into

my summer garden of a chest

and plucked it like an heirloom tomato.

I set it on the drain board

and covered it with cumin.

I sliced it into 14, quarter inch slices.

I put them in a bowl,

added my father’s Polish herbs

and soaked them in the marinade.

My heart is now in the fridge

beside a jug of milk

a 7 brightly colored peppers.

They told me to prepare my heart

Another, I suppose, will cook it.

Diana Nyad

She drank water no tongue
has touched, above orcas
and eyeless lobsters. She
saw sun sink in water that
was warm then cold, that
opened like a grave, that
spoke secret words of
regret and retreat.  She held
two countries in white
hands.  She pushed and pulled
her way to Florida. Her heart
is full of jellyfish, her skin
a soft legume.  When I am
old and grey and barely
awake.  I hope I have the
strength to say "The sea
waits for me."  I hope I
have the strength to be
blue and bloody, to hold
discouragment by the throat,
to drink redemption like wine.

Misogynist's Lament

It is because I think they’re

dumb and biting and

cynical and weak.

It’s because their conversations

are the tired découpages of failed or

failing loves.

It’s because they sell their

limited stories too often and

for too cheap.

It’s because their best is so

often our middling.

It’s because birth and decoration

are their greatest achievements.

It’s because they have fought for these rights,

and they have frittered them away.

It’s because of Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter

and Weight Watchers and Starbucks

and toy dogs and salads and eyeliner

that I am so disillusioned.

It is because they are the moon and the earth

and they settled for a spray-on tan.

Our Fathers

We are not our fathers

with their apple throats

and burlap skin.

We are not our fathers

with their thick tongues

and monstrous hands.

We are not the young

men they were,

the sons of Vietanm

and segregation.

We are not their

moon-eyed faces,

looking up as Americans

filled the sky.

We are not the social

conservatives and union

sympathizers, the

cigarette-lipped children

of immigrants.

We are not reckless

and dying.

Unavailable.

We are not our fathers,

but we are their shadows,

and we stretch

tall from their

steel-toed boots.

Developmental Mathematics

I teach developmental mathematics.

In the 1990s we would have called it

remedial. In the 1790s we would

have called it cutting edge.

My students are the leftover students.

I teach the prom queens who no longer

have a kingdom.  I teach the tattooed

and the pierced.  I teach the veterans

who hold their pencils like detonators.

My students are non-traditional students,

students who have nine to fives,

students who leave my evening class

and stock the local Wal-Mart until

the sun rises.

In my class we factor, distribute, solve,

and simplify. We do math that, for many,

was done alongside puberty.

My students did not get it, or, more often,

they were not given it. And so I hold

them by their mathematical hands,

and we walk into the world.

My students think they are stupid.

They have been told as much by faculty,

friends, family, and every news report that

compares America to China.

My students think that I am smart

because I can divide, multiply, add,

and subtract fractions without so much as

moving a pencil.

Other people like that I teach developmental

mathematics.  They say that I am a good soul.

They say that I should be lauded for my effort.

I think other people like the fact that I teach

developmental mathematics, because

they like the fact that they aren’t enrolled.

They like that there will always be cashiers

at Taco Bell and people to change their oil.

What they don’t know is that one

by one I am building a small army.

What they don’t know is that the

prom queen is about to find her crown.

What they don’t know is that the

Wal-Mart stocker just factored a trinomial

without so much as moving a pencil.

We’re all climbing ladders here.

My money is on the ones who were never told to stop.