Class Notebook

The notebook.
For my class.
Three times a week I added to it
pages of scrawled-out facts figures
diagrams and arrows pointing
Seventy pages of class time
three or four ink pens called into hard use
running up and down the pages
crinkly and stained
where they once were smooth
and fit against each other
as if one block of paper.

Now
here is the page with formulas
that must be remembered.
This page here
it is a dead end
no further exploration was made
of this information.

The landscape of this notebook
so familiar I know each page by feel.
I know where the hidden gold is
The few words that will make a difference
in the exam. In what I know.
I cannot do without the notebook.
 
The class finishes its run. The notebook
is no longer relevant. Still
I cannot let it go. Too important. Stored in a box
its pages relaxing and compressing in disuse
retirement among others of its kind
because I save all my notebooks.

I move on to other notebooks
but always with the option
to consult you
notebook
you, again
for what your pages contain
and for the chance to run my finger
over this line or that page
one more time.

1/11/18

From the collection published in 2018, Rearrange.

Cold War Tactics

i.
Sigh after sigh
the math equations the effort of studying the dry library air
which is it
that brings out that sigh from the student
bent over computer
pencil in hand
head swiveling screen to spiral-bound notebook
the answers are not coming
the sources reluctant
to share the intel.

ii.
Quick his hand shoots out
pounces on the bottle of water
standing by
encircling its waist
innocent bystander grabbed off the sidewalk
whisked away
in a dark-windowed limousine
kidnap style
it was that quick
Lifts the bottle to his lips
drinks in hard swallows
bangs it back down on the table
The quarry
thrown back out onto the street
depleted and shaken but

still standing
I guess someone paid the ransom
was it enough?

iii.
Leg push
library-chair style
the student unfolds to full length
short thighs and shins and over-long in the torso
a mop-styled head of black hair
He strides off
ignoring the chair left standing out from the table
embarrassed and exposed

iv.
Throat-clearing and coughing
in a preparatory kind of way
the student
reseated
papers shuffle
elbows bang down on the table
Sighs and more sighs
sopped up by the pages of
the open mathematics book
the tough guy who can take that kind of despair
bounce it back at a student
produce quadratic equations from it
having done so through multiple editions
and years and
sighs.

v.
The library
closes at five o’clock today
the arena swept clean
the players conceding nothing
the struggle will continue
at eight o’clock
tomorrow morning.

12/21/17