Class

1.
Everyone got sick—
but I mean sick. Plus Noah
broke his shoulder, and for days
Scott was dazed from a concussion.
Colds settled in their sinuses;
allergies erupted. I had to miss class myself
sometimes.

I couldn’t tell if they liked Whitman, so I asked.
“This much?” spreading my arms; “this
much?” with just a tiny gap between my palms.
Politely they all indicated something in
between.
Emily Dix got sick while we were doing
Emily Dickinson
which bummed out her dad as he’d named her that
on purpose.
After class I seized the book
and read Alex yet another poem.
Hadn’t I worn my heart
on my sleeve enough
for one day? But after a pause,
“She’s such a good writer,” he deeply said.
The skin of my teeth relaxed.

Now “Thirteen Ways” by Wallace Stevens. Suddenly,
success. It’s
the kind of ensemble affair I’d
fly somewhere for;
I’d get on a plane for this.
No, let me tell you
our little group taking turns today
was like Coltrane’s band
on a lost great night. My lame little class.
Just Noah and Sarah and Andy
the others and me. Whoopee.

2.
When this class ends I’ll be the one
who cares, not you. And yet

in twenty years
        in ten
           in two
who’ll remember who?

I’m in you, goofballs,
wait and see.
You’re just a blur to me.

LINDA BAMBER, Ph.D.74, is an associate professor of English at Tufts. Her poetry has appeared in Euphony, Phantasmagoria, Carquinez Poetry Review, Spoon River, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and Harvard Review, among others. She received the Cohen/Ploughshares Fiction Award in 1988 for The Time-to-Teach-Jane-Eyre-Again Blues.