My students
engaged with our
classroom material!
Rh negative blood shows
up with more frequency
than authentic interest
my high school sophomores
academic pursuits escape
without breaking a sweat
until today, our unit on poetry
contemporary poetic takes
on relationships, life,
old basketball players,
the homeless
and disenfranchised
have left them unmoved,
their empathy still pristine
in their blister packs
Today we read, write odes –
puppies, cars, cheerleading;
tributes to video games,
paeans to
socks, cheese, urns, lamps;
dead soldiers, old beauty
queens, blank paper, life
pique curiosity, prompt
student salutes to pizza,
kittens, guns, gumbo
we explore synonyms for
like, praise, honor, worship;
admire, love, ‘really like’.
hyperbole flows
like spilled syrup
and we never stop to
clean up our messes.
Each class repeats
the pattern
reveling in the un-poetic
praising the mundane
flattering the obscure
acknowledging stuff.
My day ends with ample
praises having been
ambiguously, unassuredly
sung, shouted mumbling
from loose-leaf rooftops
nut-finding blind squirrels
would be at home
in my classroom,
would probably listen at least
as intently as my students
as I recite for the
pseudo-attentive
sophomore masses
this salutation to success
my ode to odes.
– Mark Lucker
Ponderable polemics, poetic 