Tag: student

Using by Howie Good

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Using

I pulled her aside one day after class and asked if she was okay. I was sure she was using. Her skin was ashen. There were alarming dark hollows under her eyes. She was so emaciated she looked like one of the living skeletons in a photograph of concentration camp victims. She thanked me for my concern but said she was already in treatment. The next week, she was found dead on the floor of her dorm room. My first thought was that she had overdosed. I later heard it was her heart. Chronic anorexia had fatally compromised it. Every life is a card dealt face down.

*

Howie Good’s latest poetry collection, True Crime, was published by Sacred Parasite in Berlin this year.

Substitute Teacher by Todd Wynn

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Substitute Teacher

An almost empty hallway
smelling faintly of crayons
and whatever they use on the gym floor.

Classroom, dark and quiet,
lesson plans laid on the desk.
I write my name on the board,
the pronunciation in parentheses beside it.

Students will arrive soon
to teach me
if I belong here.

*

Todd Wynn is a nurse from Mansfield, Ohio. His poems have previously appeared in ONE ART.