my students’ propensity to eat cocoa
puffs for lunch, chocolate milk poured over.
It’s how long it takes Ayla
to get out of her car at morning arrival
her mother’s deployment yesterday
to Southeast Asia, leaving after drop-off.
It’s the way military kids hold
doors open for every authority figure
and how, just like at every other school, boys play with pretend guns,
shooting each other at dismissal.
It’s the first-grade girl who clears a classroom
with one gesture: hands held high, chair overhead ready to hurl
and the way she tries to connect with me by slamming
the door to the room where I’m teaching, over and over
until I am so unnerved that I drop my
phone under the table and hurry my students out.
Sophie is everywhere, my student laments.
This poem is Sophie and how many times she has moved
from base to base, her next move to Arizona
is coming up, she will leave behind her dog.
Linda Lamenza is a poet and literacy specialist in Massachusetts. She lives with her partner and their children in the Boston area. When she’s not teaching, you can find her near the ocean or in her garden. Her work has appeared in Lily Poetry Review, San Pedro River Review, The Comstock Review, Nixes Mate Review, Ovunque Siamo and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Left-Handed Poetry, was a finalist for Hunger Mountain’s May Day Mountain Chapbook Series. She is a member of the PoemWorks community in Boston as well as the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA). Feast of the Seven Fishes, her first full-length book, will be published by Nixes Mate in 2024. Read her previously published work at www.lindalamenza.com