“He tried,” Miles confirmed.
“Okay, it’s real simple. Three lines. Each one has to be between fourteen and sixteen syllables. And they all have jobs. The first line sets up the situation, the second develops it, and the third is the twist.” Ms. Blaufuss spun the top off of an invisible bottle. “Got it?”
Seemed easy enough. But once Miles started thinking about what he wanted to write about, especially as it pertained to love, he got stuck. Of course, there was his mother—she was the easiest person to write about, but he didn’t know what to say about her. I love you is only three syllables. I love you, Ma—four. I love you so much, Ma—six. Or he could write about his father. Miles had been thinking about him a lot since he got back to BVA the night before. Thinking about the talk on the stoop about how Uncle Aaron had been suspended a lot. About how the most heroic thing you could do is take care of your community. About how sometimes to love someone, you have to be hard on them. Miles started scribbling.
My father’s love looks like…
Miles counted out the syllables on his fingers. Started again.
To my father, love sometimes means—
“And time’s up,” Ms. Blaufuss announced. Ugh. He was just finding his groove. “Does anyone want to share?” Ms. Blaufuss asked.
Lots of hands went up, and Miles didn’t have to turn around to know that Ganke was waving his around like a madman.
“Um…how ’bout…you, Alicia.” Ms. Blaufuss motioned for her, smiling. Miles could hear Ganke deflating behind him, his frustrated breath crawling up the back of Miles’s neck. “Come up to the front of the class.” Alicia took her place in front of everyone, her paper in her hand, the purple ink bleeding through the back. “What’s the name of your sijo?”
“It’s untitled,” Alicia said. She pursed her lips for just a second, then began.
“A romantic mountaintop view of the world is love for most
Being that close to clouds strips them of form, turns them to fog
Perhaps the real beauty is on the way up, where like is.”
The class erupted for a grinning Alicia as she returned to her seat.
“That was amazing,” Miles leaned over and said to her. She was known around BVA as a poet and even headed up the school’s poetry club—the Dream Defenders—which of course, Ms. Blaufuss was the advisor of. Miles figured she was good—he never thought anything negative about her, ever—but he had never actually been to any of the poetry club’s events, mainly because he didn’t think he’d get it. Only one person could say stuff like the poetry all around you, and that person was not a teenager. Unless of course, Alicia said it. She could’ve said anything. She could’ve written about her love for freakin’…cockapoos, and Miles would’ve found some redeeming quality in it.
“Thanks,” she said, blushing slightly.
“Fantastic, Alicia,” Ms. Blaufuss said. “I should mention, Alicia and the Dream Defenders will be hosting an open mic this evening at six in the quad. I’d love to see you all there sharing some of this work, okay? And to sweeten the pot, if you show up, there’s extra credit in it for you. Poetry is about community—it’s not just about expression, but also being a witness to that expression.” Ms. Blaufuss glanced at Miles. He could definitely use the extra credit. “Again, nice job, Alicia.”
“Yo, you think maybe Alicia’s half-Korean?” Ganke whispered in Miles’s ear.
Miles didn’t respond. Just swatted Ganke’s words away like a swarm of annoying gnats.
In the midst of the cafeteria cacophony of pitchy voices, Miles choked down what he could of his lunch and took two small sips of apple juice before the bell rang. Kids jumped up from the lunch tables and poured into the hall. Ganke, who had already had Chamberlain’s class that morning, slapped Miles’s hand before they went their separate ways.
“Good luck,” Ganke said.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Cue the ominous organ music.
As Miles entered the classroom, Mr. Chamberlain was scribbling a quote passionately across the board, his handwriting scratchy and jagged. When he finished writing, Mr. Chamberlain turned to face the students, still filling in their desks. His skin was yellowy and thin, and his lips—beneath his furry slug of a mustache—were chapped from constant licking. He assumed his normal meditative stance—hands together, woven fingers, his face a tight fist.
“War means fighting, and fighting means killing,” he said softly. Miles refused to look him in the face. Actually he refused to look anyone in the face, still embarrassed about how the suspension went down. Alicia, who also had this class with Miles, sat in front of him. Right in front of him.
“War means fighting, and fighting means killing,” Mr. Chamberlain repeated, the students settling into silence. He was referring to the quote he’d scrawled on the board behind him. “War…” he started again, now closing his eyes. There was a hush in the room. For a few, it was because they were amused. For others, like Miles, it was out of respect…or maybe fear. But for most, it was from boredom. Most students used Mr. Chamberlain’s class as nap time, dozing off while he droned from the front of the room with closed eyes, almost as if he was speaking in some kind of intense dream state. “War means fighting, and fighting means killing,” he repeated for the last time. Every day, he delivered a new quote three times like a chant, an incantation summoning the spirit of this sucks.
And…this sucked.
Mr. Chamberlain picked up right where Ganke said he left off, explaining to the class what America would be if slavery hadn’t existed.
“It could be argued that the country as we know it wouldn’t even be here. The luxuries you all love so much, like your precious cell phones, might still be just a lofty thought meant for an alien planet somewhere far away. Slavery was the building block of our great country. We shouldn’t just blindly write off the argument for the Confederacy wanting to keep it. It could very well be argued that they weren’t just fighting for the present, but also for the future.”
While Mr. Chamberlain was yapping, Miles squirmed in his seat. Not because he had to go to the bathroom—no, he knew what Mr. Chamberlain was stating so boldly was dead wrong. Morally. There were so many things to consider. The most obvious was…slavery. Human beings enslaved, mistreated, killed.