By H. E. Wright
For your new white career life,
you�re teaching
black Baltimore
sixth graders
the four kinds of sentences
in the entirety of the language �
as if there are really
only four types of sentences.
(But it says so on the test
You�re supposed to teach to.)
And then you hear them speak
of �paramours�
in the back rows,
in whispers of crack
and threats.
And you are so west,
so white.
It takes you merely a second thought
to think: �dialect.�
Translate. That is, �power mower.�
The stash lives there�
disrespecting grass,
cuttings,
and the black sixth grade.
***
�I Was The Hell�
By H. E. Wright
At the end of things
I sometimes ran away from home
And spent late nights,
Not tangled up in liquor or other women,
But at the IHOP.
Different IHOP�s really,
Since I didn�t want to become known
To any of the waitresses
As one of the pathetic regulars.
I wanted to be what I had always been:
An irregular.
There are two smells you can count on
At the IHOP: First, fake maple syrup.
Second, chlorine
From the still-wet tourists
Who came over from the motel pool
For cheap eats before bed.
It was also here that I learned about the gravy:
Stay away from it.
It was here that I filled small notebooks
With incomprehensible notes to myself,
Believing they would somehow start
To show me a clear way
To make the tie between us last a little longer�
Until we could both come together again
To our senses.
What faith in language!
Under the spell of undrinkable coffee,
I re-wrote
And re-read the scribbled gloss
Of all the acts of my life�
Trying to remember every choice
And every reason.
This I did over and over until the dawn:
She was always closed and expensive.
And even as I was drawn to this, her style,
There was no room for me at her inn.
At the International House of Pancakes,
I had a place to be: It was open to me.
And when I left through its door,
It was never because I heard the solid words �Get out.�
Always, it was �Thanks. Come again.�