I Had a Teacher
I had a teacher in a fiction writing class
A class I had no business taking
Because clearly I can’t write fiction
And he was a tall man, older than we
And he made us laugh because after reading a student’s story
He would look out from the front of the room
As if on a hillside overlooking the rooftops of a little village
Holding all of experience, and
From there he easily located
The existing genre into which the story fit
So with a wise affection
For the human condition
He might say
“Oh, this is a ‘boy befriends escaped elephant’ story”
Or, “Oh, this is a ‘woman grows herbs that give her special powers’ story”
And one day he even said
“Oh, this is ‘a man frozen in a block of ice wakes up’ story”
And I thought, Oh now he’s gone too far
And it took time, it really did
First to realize that soon enough
We were older than he when he was our teacher
And then
No sooner did life narrate the next moment
Than I would think, kindly
Oh, this is the “happy second-marriage in France” story
Or, this is the “sudden cancer” story
Or, this is “the woods were once filled with parrots and panthers” story
And it came to pass
That we ourselves could see the rooftops
And felt a real tenderness for the miniatures on their rounds
The older woman carrying a net bag to buy bread
And her mother, whose ring
I myself wear
Now closing her eyes.
Anecdotes of the Jars
Studies show, I said to my mother-in-law,
that no single person needs over 70
empty deli containers at a time.
(I was throwing them out.)
She could no longer employ such discretion—
but it was before those terrible
long years she stayed alive with all
she had learned stored somewhere
inaccessible, so she smiled. And if
you’re lucky you can see how
the pickle jars and takeout rounds
add up; tossing a few in my own kitchen
this morning—with a cold disregard
for some abstract future use
in which they might save the day—
I flashed to clearing out my
Grandma Belle’s apartment. I had
begun with the drawers holding
decades of cards she’d received
for Mother’s Day, her birthdays,
all the holidays, and after emptying
their embossed flowers bearing the
ancestors’ longhand messages to her
into the hall incinerator chute
(now outlawed) I assumed I had trained
at altitude and gamely took on
the lesser, unemotional containers.
But their ranks proved mighty
and their mass so great it brought
to mind the World Book photo
that decades ago illustrated our
annual intake of sugar: a man in a suit
sheepishly bettered by the peak
of white grains towering next to him!
And by the sixth contractor bag
I wondered if it was a magic trick, perhaps
because the quarts and pints could
hide their numbers inside each other
like partisans behind the trees.
And, then, fit inside this memory itself
is the dream I had, saying goodbye
to my other grandmother, Bess,
just inside the door of her apartment,
the one where her bedroom of 50
years was on display in an alcove
off the living room, and I looked
her in the eyes, held both her hands
and said, you have been a bag of sugar
in my life, and then she led me
to the kitchen where she pointed to
the four shelves of empty jam and
applesauce jars, held both my hands,
looked into my eyes, and said, Jessica,
Someday, these will all be yours.
