Yards

"Yards" first appeared in Hayden Ferry's Review. You can read an excerpt of it here.

Teaching Seniors: A Graduation Speech

In August, teaching seniors is like leading a Roman phalanx down the emperor’s road. Our polished shields and helmets glint in the sunlight. Our crimson standards snap in the wind. Our leather-soled sandals echo on the cobbles with magnificent precision. We are many moving as one. Even the wheat we pass in the fields seems to bend forward to be closer to us, we are that beautiful and perfect.

Teaching seniors in September is like leading a Roman phalanx down the emperor’s road in every way, only now we are lightly sweating. Now we are oiled and coiled, as they say. We are ready for anything. Our lines have stretched out a little and the march of our sandals on the cobbles, although no longer a perfect meter, is still quite formidable. If you’re out on the emperor’s road in September and you hear us marching, you’re going to want to get out of the way.

Teaching seniors in October is also like leading a Roman phalanx down the emperor’s road, but beyond the purview of the city gates we’ve settled into what I would call a more realistic pace for traveling great distances. Out here, our shields are more effective as umbrellas. A few guys have even taken off their helmets and hung them from their belts and begun to use their spears as walking sticks, but we’re still oiled and coiled, ready for anything. Those helmets can be donned in an instant if need be, and how long does it really take for a walking stick to turn into a dangerous weapon again? Not long, I say.

In November, teaching seniors resembles leading a Roman phalanx down the emperor’s road, only now the clatter of additional spears-turned-walking sticks and clanging of helmets hanging from belts has added a sort of free-form jazz feel to the rhythm of our march. The days have turned crisp and a few guys have taken to batting at falling leaves like kittens. There’s something in the air that makes us all take a deep breath and sigh. These days we are more well-intentioned than well-armed, and even though you may not feel the need to run off and hide in the woods at our approach, you’d definitely stop to admire the dust of our progress.

In December, leading a Roman phalanx down the emperor’s road is no longer an apt simile for teaching seniors. Guiding a like-minded coalition may be more suitable. But don’t let the haphazard nature of our lines fool you. The great majority of us are still steely-eyed and ready for action, but some have found the emperor’s cobbles to be a hard and uneven surface and that sandals are poorly designed for traveling long distances. Some have taken to walking barefoot in the adjacent fields with their possessions tied up in red hobo bandannas, which they carry over their shoulders at the end of their spears. Even Hannibal had to stop to rest his elephants, and so we leave the road and make a camp in a clearing. We trade our polished breast plates for brightly-colored sweaters, and instead of Pax Romana, we sing O’Tannenbaum. We fill our waterskins full of eggnog and rest awhile by the fire to tell stories and offer each other the gifts of friendship and peace.

In January, we’re all business again, steely-eyed, oiled and coiled, and for a while, I’m reminded of the eager days of August when teaching seniors is like leading a Roman phalanx down the emperor’s road, when seniors have that new-senior smell and everything is as fresh as a first kiss. But who are we trying to kid? This isn’t August. This is January, baby! Threshold to the new year! The beginning of the end! The skies may be bruised and the weather may be chill, but it’s spring on the school calendar and so it is in our hearts. We may not be marching with the same enthusiasm as we did in August, but we’re definitely feeling optimistic about a conclusion to our journey.

The poet, T.S. Eliot said that April was the cruelest month, but for those of us on the emperor’s road, it’s February. February is when Tragedy strikes. We expected Tragedy to come swooping down from the woods on a dark horse, his black robes flapping behind him. We would have been ready for that. What we weren’t prepared for was Tragedy to sidle up next to us and quietly lead one of our friends away. We had to stop then, no marching down the emperor’s road for us. We threw off our armor and wrapped our arms around one another and said goodbye to our friend. We stopped marching then and took the time to care for each other and marching down the emperor’s road seemed a distant and unimportant thing.

In March, we do what heroes do and pick ourselves up again and shake off the webs of our sorrow. At first, we stagger and lurch, but soon we all start to move again with an eye toward the bright horizon. Soon, we remember our purpose and that we’re supposed to be marching down the emperor’s road. It’s at this point in our journey that some of us begin to drop out of line and wander off into the woods to look at interesting wildlife or stop for too long to restrap our sandals. In fact, there’s a certain irony to the month of March when it comes to teaching seniors. There may be Ides in March, but it turns out there’s not that much actual marching. There’s some ambling, a little shuffling, a healthy dose of ennui, and a general drowsiness of the soul. The good news is there is no angst. Angst is for freshman.

April. If someone were to say to you that teaching seniors in April is like leading a Roman phalanx down the emperor’s road, I’d recommend you approach that person with extreme caution and perhaps a large net with which to subdue them and take them back to whichever place that have clearly escaped because there is no way that teaching seniors in April is like leading a Roman phalanx down the emperor’s road. Where we were once a unit of steely-eyed, oiled and coiled individuals moving as one, now we are more of a general migration across the plains in search of the Promised Land. In April, the intimidating stamp of the Roman sandal has been replaced by the peaceful whoosh of the flip-flop. Hawaiian shirts are more in fashion than polished armor, and those of us that wandered off into the woods have now returned wild-eyed with native tattoos and Cochella t-shirts.

And so now, May. We gather here today on the hilltop overlooking the warm and inviting lights of May. We are wrung out and tired. We’ve been on the emperor’s road for a long time and we’ve been eating the same bread and drinking the same wine for too long now. It’s time for a new road and a new city to sack. But before we begin that journey, let us all stand here and rest for a while. Let us all take time tonight to look back as friends and remember how far we’ve marched, and let us take these last few weeks to enjoy our time together, and share our stories of how far we will go.

Company Man

"Company Man" first appeared in the Spring/Summer 2007 of Weber: The Contemporary West and was the winner of the Dr. Neila C. Seshachari award for fiction. Click HERE to read it.

An Ode to a Magnetic Poetry Board at an All-Male Jesuit High School

My dear stainless-steel graffiti window,
kin to Scrabble, crosswords, and bathroom stalls.

I consult you like the stars,
for your galaxies give me hope.

O, chrome Oracle,
who knows what new miracle
my students will uncover in you today.
They study over you like historians,
like soothsayers, like Ph.ds
looking for clues, connections,
ways to unlock secret knowledge.

But instead of discovering a new species
of dinosaur, a cure for cancer,
a solution to global warming,
they have invented new meanings
for words like chocolate, apparatus and moan.
Words like puppies, pudding, and alps
are no longer the stuff of nursery rhymes.
In you they have hunted down every breast and digit,
every milk-y, sweat-y, and meat-y.
They have found every dark corner
of your shining face.

I tip my hat to your vinyl tile alphabet,
your chicken soup of pubescent spirit.
As much as I try to exterminate
every possibility of innuendo
you keep producing a bizarre harvest
of the sacred and profane.

In you, students have become masters
of the gerund, purveyors of metaphor,
word farmers pulling new language from rocky soil,
a playground for language,
a slum for the mind,

a barren new planet full of fields
where they said life could not grow.

A Rare Sighting of My Father

It might as well be a picture of Bigfoot

You, standing on a track of heavy machinery, 
Suffering work interrupted to pose

In a sun-struck Polaroid.

That steel wool beard,

Your engineer’s cap

Casting a bar of shadow across your eyes 
As you claim the machine in the way 
Cowboys in the old photos once
Touched the necks of their horses.

What kind of man am I,
Me, the pb & j savant,

The lunch sack love note poet,  

Who saves for Christmas and scurries 
Between little league and volleyball--
The boy has the flu,

The girl needs poster board 
For a school project
Due tomorrow.

My hands will never be as calloused, 

My skin never so wind scorched,

My scars will always just be scars 
Without stories, but I have your build,

Your blue eyes of appraisal,

Your hard-set heels,

Your spinning compass.

In another photo it could be me

Standing on heavy machinery,

Squinting into a low slung sun,

Bracing myself against the cold of the plain

Before returning to the heat of the engine,

And a smoldering cigarette,

To gouge out oil field trenches

Shoving rock and muddy prairie aside

Until it was time to return to company lodging,

Maybe to pray over a bowl of canned soup

While the wind rocked the trailer to sleep,

To drink a beer while sifting through radio static

To occasionally think of you, my son, and wonder

What you’d made of your life.