Back to school night
slumbering parents sag through rooms
look brightly at each other, wrinkle noses
then drop masks

plop into plastic saddles their asses stir to remember.
in history the teacher exults
“the kids didn’t mind the Mayflower!”
frightening me badly.
in maths the boyish new teacher
is lanky and collegiate

thick-haired and cheery
wearing a lanyard and i.d. badge
like a classified scientist
thoracic concavity and blousing shirt
conveying underfed youth
a distance runner
at the spring dance.
in his excited kid voice he says
“we’ll study exponential variances.
So, geometry.”
I bark a weary laugh
look around at the parents
jaws open, dogs awaiting a tossed mercy-snack.
worst is Physical Science
eyes bagged and non-responsive
grups looking tiredly at their iShit
the teacher is a former materials engineer
wonderstruck by her subject which is
the Crushing Vastnesses, plural
our real-time embrace of the growing void
things are moving away from each other
as one would expect in an explosion
but accelerating as the mess blossoms outward
teacher talks about kids finding passion
she calls it “their passion” like everybody does
a common mistake.
the dead are unmoved
occupy the eternal moment daintily moving fat hands
over phone screens with pinkies extended
“We’ll study what makes up the atom,” she says.
The Atom!
they stare at her through draping eyelids
my blood leaps a synapse
I attempt to stand
I can’t wrestle myself free of the school desk
with its sanguine pencil groove
and perpendicular tubing.
heads lazily turn.
I’m momentarily constrained
unable to free myself I begin shouting
from a semi-crouched, prostrate position
legs held fast by gunmetal
“Oh! Are you bored of the Atom!
Space is a windless field of rocks!”
So self-righteous, I later realize.
Possibly being dumbstruck
is not a sound measure of spiritual wholeness.
We go home and microwave mini pizza
the first greedy bite fastens a scalding flap of cheese
to my hard palate
and I scream o god how I scream