Sara R. Burnett: English II

But Miss I make good money,

he tells me after we’ve tallied the days
missed. Enough for his black jeans,
black hoodie, sneakers and the rest
to send back to El Salvador.

You should see me Miss at work sometime.
I don’t say I was there last week
at the Asian fusion restaurant where water pipes
down a green glass wall and you can order
dim sum at any time of night. I don’t say

I didn’t see him while he worked in the back
scrubbing dishes, mopping floors, hefting
economy-sized containers of rice and oils,
spices and cans of sauces, sorting silverware
in bins, taking out the trash. . .

when hours later he should be in my class,
where we’re reading Things Fall Apart

and when he’s there, I’m often at his side
to catch him up, to help him get
at least enough to pass.

My grade. I want to know my grade, Miss.

And I have to tell him he’s failing
as his older brother chides him
in English and in Spanish,
he doesn’t know I understand both

because I didn’t say I understand
nor did I offer to speak in my broken Spanish.
If I’m the white maestra to them,
keeper of test scores, the red pen,
of a kind of knowledge

you can buy your way into,
if you’re lucky, if you pass,
I wouldn’t deny that truth.
I imagine how it might’ve been
for my mother when she arrived

in Miami in 1960 from Havana,
the only “Hispanic” in her class
when Abuelo forbade singing
or laughter noting how many were dying
or dead or in prison back home.

It’s not the same story;
it is the same story. I go back
and forth in time. I hear Abuelo say
lo más importante son los papeles

and my mother says speak English outside.

But my student, not yet a man, sits
in front of me in a country, not yet
his home, a country who doesn’t see him
or even me, sometimes, and I wonder
what can he learn that he doesn’t know from me.

Who am I to say this book is worth
the clothes on his back, the money home?
How can I tell him what a day is worth?
The next morning, his empty chair, and later
Miss, I’m sorry about class.

c) 2022 Sara R. Burnett. From Seed Celestial, winner of the 2021 Autumn House Poetry Prize, selected by Eileen Myles.

Sara R. Burnett lives in Maryland with her husband and children. Seed Celestial is her first book.