Tonight I sat and took in every Christian bullet

pro-gun-anti-abortion-fuck-feminism-repressive American tongue

and I wanted to scream. To then bite it off.

To end that voice and give you back your own…

There are nuances that stretch

beyond curriculum,

the discussions, debates, 

presences and silences.

The moments that matter; the moments that teach.

These nuances punctuate education. 

Education. The subject – irrelevant – 

until you finally settle upon English.

And everyone. Everyone. Has an opinion.

A strange, safe, but curious creature 

is the English teacher,

whose doctrine supports and far outweighs

the double nature of the stained glass,

but who is scary in her abandon.

Scary in her presence, 

in her desire to 

step across that boundary and talk about it.

But a squeaky voice of contextual wrongness speaks,

always, stifling and stirring and poisoning - 

a red mosquito that pricks from a small-mouthed tongue

too weak to understand nuance. 

Excluded and jealous. 

Arrogant and proud.

Too much so to stretch. 

To go beyond curriculum. 

No. To them, there is no nuance.

But the English Teacher embodies the 

nexus of all that is possible.

We expose, question, enable and promote

all that is to be and will be and should be

and could be.

But we are the bag

and the punches 

hit thick against thin skin. 

We become, and you always were, trashed.

“I hate English.” 

If I had a dollar for every time…

“I hate English.” 

But what do you mean? 

What does this unrequited hate even mean?

And whose voice is this actually?

Tonight I sat and took in every Christian bullet

pro-gun-anti-abortion-fuck-feminism-repressive American tongue

and I wanted to scream. To then bite it off.

To end that voice and give you back your own…