Beauty for Ashes Poetry Review

Deborah Phelps

A Poet Teaching

Nine a.m. and there's not enough coffee
In Colombia to get you through this hour.
They yawn, open-mouthed, and apprise
Your costume du jour, which always entertains
Even if the syllabus doesn't. You put
Your hands in the pockets of your blazer,
Look down at the lectern and intone:
"Dover Beach."
An insect swish of pages turning. Oh to be
In your tiny study, with the sun streaming
Through the window as it does here
But on your shelf of slender sacred texts
With the cat on the sill watching you with
Her sage eyes revise, revise, revise, not
On these hungover children who can never find
The right page. Yes, to have your morning
Entire! Nine a.m. and the world all before you,
Not this thorny, dry terrain of unmade faces
And virgin textbooks doomed for quick re-sale.
On cue, the girl with the everlasting cold emits
An elaborate sneeze as your fingers push
Through a hole in your blazer pocket.
Ah, you need this job.
So you begin Arnold's lament softly, gently,
Drawn almost against your will into that old
Plangent rhetoric of pain. You move from
The lectern and fluidly string his words out
Of your memory as the eyes of twenty-five
Twenty-year-olds follow you, amazed at
"This world/ Which seems to lie before us
like a land of dreams." Or perhaps it is
Just that they've never seen such a thing before,
Someone they know caught in this strange
Act of love. But what does it matter? "Ah, love..."
At least we're all on the same page
As Arnold's voice merges invisibly with yours
With his raw poet-yearning, whispering:
Jack, you need this job.

Deborah Phelps is a native of Baltimore, MD and has a doctorate in English from the University of Delaware. Presently she is an associate professor of English at Sam Houstan State University in Huntsville, TX. Forthcoming publications include Faultline and Gulf Coast.




Isaiah 61:1-3

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