Prof. Lorca Teaches English 1A at Saint Jerome Community College
“Today we shall begin discussing
Longinus’ treatise On the Sublime.”
Ernie scoots his chair next to Connie,
the feet scraping the linoleum tiles.
“What are you doing, Ernesto?”
“Can I look over somebody’s shoulder? I don’t have a book.”
“You’ve had plenty of time to purchase the book.
If you were a matador, would you borrow
another’s sword once you’d entered the plaza de toros?”
Connie looks at Ernie—“I sold the blood-
colored roses from my mother’s garden
so I could buy textbooks before the semester started.”
Lorca turns to Connie—“Olé. Connie fills the room
with rose petals falling from the moon.”
Joseph shouts—“I have my book,
but it’s boring and difficult to understand.
Why do we have to read it anyways?”
Lorca pulls a red bandana from his pocket,
dabs his brow, lifts his chalkboard pointer
straight into the air as if summoning
Manuel Garcia Maera or Juan Belmonte.
“Because 2000 years ago Longinus knew
That to reach the sublime we must nurture intellect,
passion, craft, diction, grammar. And,”
Lorca continues—“we must allow ourselves
to be inspired by the spirit of others
if we want to fight the duende along the rim
of the well and strike the ground with sentences
that brighten the dying grass with volcanos.
We must read words that ignite the scrolls like lightning rods!”
Bruce raises his hand, recites,
“And the serpent said unto the woman,
‘Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be like gods….’”
Lorca responds— “Olé. Bruce reminds us
Longinus also believed imagery moves the reader’s soul.”
Lorca scans the blank walls, flips open his book,
the pages sticky-tabbed with Post-its,
and points the tattered spine at Shelly sitting
on the other side of the classroom
as she bites her fingernails and examines
the split ends of her hair— “What is an image?” he asks.
Jack raises his hand and says, “William Shakespeare
writes about the darling buds of May
and how the eye of heaven shines. Is that sublime?”
“Yes, properly chosen words are . . .”
and José interjects, “Blossoms on marble statues.”
“Olé again! José sings with rain in his throat.”
Professor Lorca again dabs his forehead with his fiery bandana,
passes it around his waist like a muleta,
and proclaims, “And so with Longinus, we must all rise to our toes
and throw our chests out over the bull’s horns!”
Faulkner and Compassion
I sat on the couch with a Jack-O-Lantern.
My jaw ached as I shoved Snickers,
Big Hunks, and Three Musketeers into my mouth.
I wanted Tom and Jerry because
I laughed out loud each time
Jerry whacked Tom with a 1 X 4.
Most of all, I wanted Blackbelt Theatre—
Ninja warriors springing from
piles of maple leaves and threatening
the moon with nunchucks
the way I sprang from pecan leaves
and flailed scraps of PVC pipe
at the crows perched on the telephone lines
crisscrossing my yard.
But sometimes my father came into the family room,
turned off the TV with the pliers,
and walked along the bookshelf—
his index finger tapping each spine.
“Here, I want you to read this….”
He’d pull the book from its place,
open it, and then put it on my lap.
I read O’Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief,”
Salinger’s “For Esméith Love and Squalor,”
and Masefield’s “I Could not Sleep for Thinking of the Sky.”
And for a few moments, I’d forget about my plans—
torching earwigs and black widows
with a Bic lighter and a can of Aqua Net
behind the umbrella hedges on the side of the house.
Instead, I thought about Indians,
tea rooms, planets, and comets,
not about the frog carcasses hidden in ivy
that crawled the fence slats…
I wanted to poke the frogs’ bloated bellies
while the flesh flies and bluebottles
swarmed the popsicle stick
I’d sharpened with a utility knife.
One afternoon, Dad took from the shelf
a collection of Nobel speeches,
opened it, placed it in my lap,
said, “Read it. You’ll like it.
Or you can help me rake leaves.”
He went outside, and through the window,
I heard the metal tines rattle
as he piled leaves between the ash trees.
I wanted to dig up night crawlers
that I knew lived under the water faucet—
open my tackle box, and practice
baiting my hooks to catch and gut
rainbow trout at Shaver Lake.
Dad dragged empty garbage cans onto the lawn.
“William Faulkner,” I said to myself.
I held the page’s edge between my thumb and forefinger
and read, “When the last ding dong of doom
has clanged and faded from the last
worthless rock hanging tideless
in the last red and dying evening…”
“What does that mean?” I asked myself.
“Love, honor, pity, pride, compassion, and sacrifice?”
Props? Pillars? Endure? Prevail?
I let the book slide off my lap.
I snuck outside, failed to find worms,
stared at the sun, nailed army men to fence slats,
pelted them with dirt clods,
made exploding sounds:
John Wayne wiping out the Germans.
Then, a frightened opossum emerged from 2 X 4s
leaning against the fence.
A joey fell from the jill’s back
and landed at my bare feet,
I stepped back, my arm stretched—
a catapult of dirt clods locked in my fist,
but from some blind spot
in my nine-year-old brain,
Faulkner’s words resonated, whispered,
pooled around my ankles:
“love, honor, pity, pride, compassion, and sacrifice.”
So I dug my father’s work gloves
out of the wire basket nailed to the tool bench,
slipped them on, scooped up the baby,
laid it on the rail, watched
from the screened porch until Ursa Major
emerged from behind the tool shed—
corrugated roof beaming with starlight.
It darted down the rail
and vanished under the neighbor’s tree branches
teeming with mandarins illuminated
by the kindness I discovered
swirling in my heart.
Reading “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams
—For My Students
From the back of class, I listened to Professor McDermott say,
“When I met my wife, she was wearing a hat
and sitting in a courtyard teeming with hummingbirds.”
Why did he tell us that? I wondered.
“Please open your textbooks to page 121,” he said.
I flipped open Kennedy’s anthology
Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama,
found Williams’ poem as Professor McDermott
lifted his hand and read, “So much depends/ upon…”
I looked through the cobwebbed window,
glanced at my wristwatch and thought about my shift at the carwash,
hoped I’d be sent to customer service where
I’d make a few bucks in tips unlike the window washers
who spent afternoons stuck in the tunnel.
Professor McDermott said, “What does this poem mean?”
I stared through the window and listened to
the grounds crew mow, edge, and sweep the quad,
and I dreamed about the carne asada burrito I’d buy at breaktime—
extra salsa and escabeche in a Ziplock on the side.
Sunlight fell through windows and sliced the chalkboard…
the class sat in shoots of dust with thoughts fading into oblivion.
Again, Professor McDermott recited the poem,
and as the words left his mouth, his fingertips seemed to connect atoms in the air—
“What does it mean?” he asked with wide eyes
that scanned the room while we stared at the linoleum floor.
Always too Mexican, always too dark, too skinny,
smelling of chemicals I used to scrub the tar off whitewalls,
carwash in my pores, t-shirt, jeans,
I melted in the corner because raising my hand took more effort than
dragging myself through ten hours of 100 degree heat.
Again, Professor McDermott recited the poem.
I followed in my book with a pencil because I wanted to find
a few crumbs of bread drifting from William’s table,
tried to ready myself in case Professor McDermott called on me….
Nada, no sublime thoughts inspired by Formalist Criticism,
just me and carwash gunk under my fingernails,
just me sniffing the solvents rising from my clothes….
My thoughts slipped back to the previous summer
when I made cash detailing cars for friends and family.
I remembered my dad giving me a poetry book that he read
for his English class at Fresno State College before he joined the army….
I sat in the cab of my red truck, windows down,
ate Slim Jims, and drank orange whips between appointments, read poems,
flipped to the appendix, and stared at the writers’ photographs.
Heat radiated from the windshield and vinyl seats,
pages slipped through my sweaty fingertips—
and images filled my mind like stardust spread across my windshield at night.
Then, my thoughts returned to our discussion:
Yeats, Robinson, Frost, Lawrence, Owen, Sitwell, and Bishop,
books, bullets, fences, humming birds, wagons, nails, and bones….
ghosts and images that sang to me as I slowly raised my hand
and my professor asked me, “What do you think?”
Four cheerleaders in the front row turned and stared—
their blond hair wafting of cocoanut and shea butter shampoo.
“Maybe the wheelbarrow symbolizes technology.”
Professor McDermott said, “That’s a wonderful interpretation,
and what do you think the rain might represent?”
“Maybe the rain symbolizes nature?” I said.
“I agree 100%. Now, what do you think about the white chickens?”
I stirred in my desk and thought about my shift,
about my knuckles that burned when I sank a scrub sponge
into gallons of soap.…I don’t want to work here forever.
I stared at my desktop, lifted my eyes, said, “Could the image represent God?”
A cheerleader blurted, “God is a chicken?”
I felt an empty bucket fall on my head and stones pound galvanized steel.
Professor McDermott said, “Ignore them. Tell me how.”
My palms pressed against the desktop, I wanted to spring for the door,
drop out of school and go to work full-time.
But the ghosts returned, sang to me like rain swirling through the sky—
rain tapping against the window as you waken,
draw the curtain, and lift the pane in your room.
The poem rose off the page, and the words hung in the air until
the connective tissue faded, and then, I saw nothing the but images.
I said, “It’s not the chickens. It’s the color white. White can represent purity.
In Catechism, the Sisters said, ‘Nothing is purer than God.’”
My professor said, “I like how you focus on the images.
Would you like to add anything before we read ‘This is Just to Say?’”
“Williams thinks our lives depend upon technology, nature, and God,” I said.
“‘No ideas but in things,’” Professor McDermott said and nodded,
which I remembered the next morning as I sat in the backyard with a notebook
and wrote about the jasmine twisted with cobwebs and funnel spiders
hidden behind branchlets, leaves, and blooms.
