Meet the Teachers Night
Our synagogue’s security service
is employed by the father of a current student,
the rabbi joked, “so they protect the kids
as if they are their own.”
After pre-school the children hide
where bushes clarify a dark metal fence,
take turns looking for each other.
When it’s nice out the all-day kids come
press their faces to the bars.
“I hate that it’s fenced in,” Jordan says,
“When I was 10 my mother came home
from teaching here to tell me about swastikas
on the walls, swings and monkey bars
and the merry-go-round burned down.”
I am learning old news is passed along
like this, if at all, after a procession
of subordinate clauses, watching
so the other parents won’t hear.
Once I ran into the garage to stop a little girl who bolted when her mother looked the other way. I was just quick,
we’d all have done it. I ask around about the arson. No one else knows, not even rumor and lore.
tells me not to worry.
“We have more to fear
from a random shooting.”
is employed by the father of a current student,
the rabbi joked, “so they protect the kids
as if they are their own.”
After pre-school the children hide
where bushes clarify a dark metal fence,
take turns looking for each other.
When it’s nice out the all-day kids come
press their faces to the bars.
“I hate that it’s fenced in,” Jordan says,
“When I was 10 my mother came home
from teaching here to tell me about swastikas
on the walls, swings and monkey bars
and the merry-go-round burned down.”
I am learning old news is passed along
like this, if at all, after a procession
of subordinate clauses, watching
so the other parents won’t hear.
Once I ran into the garage to stop a little girl who bolted when her mother looked the other way. I was just quick,
we’d all have done it. I ask around about the arson. No one else knows, not even rumor and lore.
I don’t want to scare anyone.
A friend who works heretells me not to worry.
“We have more to fear
from a random shooting.”
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller's poetry appears in Brooklyn Rail, Concision Poetry Journal, Berru Poetry Series, ANMLY, miCRo, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere; multimedia and multi-genre work has been published at Grist Journal, Talking Writing, MAYDAY Magazine, and elsewhere. Previously he has been a Fellow at the Tent Writing Conference at the Yiddish Book Center. Currently Joshua teaches at San Jacinto College, and lives in Houston with his wife and son. His debut collection, The Art of Bagging, won Conduit’s Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize, and is forthcoming.