Because the news is already old
by the time I read it
in the morning newspaper
and the commute too short
to bother with radio,
I dress in the absolutely wrong
color: Fuchsia, a color
frequently misspelled, seemingly
artificial, but in truth
spectacular in nature
and in the silent flowers
on my skirt, innocently
purchased on a steep sale
the summer before the fall
when I enter a classroom,
as I have every fall
since I was a child. Only now
I am a teacher without knowledge
of what my students already know
as possible. In the stairwell,
a hasty announcement about
attacks somewhere else, more
to follow, meanwhile uphold
regular routines. And so
we pledge allegiance, circle
for morning meeting, only during
new business, one girl asks
why people are leaping
out of buildings, and I can feel
my fuchsia crumbling
as I steady the catch
in my teacher’s voice to ask
where she has heard such a sad,
sad thing. I saw on TV,
the people jumping, she reports,
before my mother turned
it off, and so I know
she is telling the truth
of what she knows and that
she is owed the truth,
even from a teacher
who knows nothing, knows only
the spectacular failure
of any explanation.
A native of Los Angeles, Marci Vogel has published fiction and nonfiction in the Los Angeles Times and the Culver City News. She is completing an MFA in poetry, and her poems have appeared in Colorado Review and Spillway. A past participant of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Vogel was recently nominated for the AWP Intro Journals Award and a Pushcart Prize.
*Photo courtesy of Todd Binger.