Self-Taught | Ananya S. Guha
Zeroing in
the angle disdains
lines intersecting,
the compass twiddled
the protractor failed
(to measure)
geometry in school was
trying, as trying as the teacher who thought
everything is self-taught.
learning poems
Consultant | Tempest Brew
Listen closely
to the singular
voice
of your inner
consultant
still learning
how
to be this
species.
Swallowing the Scorpion | Cattail Jester
How the powers of division
stand up firm and resolute.
As when one young person
says I will dislike this entire
group, don’t make me read
about them.
Tender shoot, take the words
you so wish to drown out
and swim in them.
Take the word you struggle with,
stinger-first like a scorpion,
chew it down.
I know it is difficult, but question
your motive and thought.
Now, is it love that moves you,
or a poison you let grow
inside you?
Go ahead, take the antidote.
Broken Frame | JD DeHart
So, you see the way
I see. Hitchcock was a master
of this.
Take me inside the mind
of the character. Problem is
once you have run
your gray matter across some
pages, I wonder if the ink
doesn’t leave a streak there.
You once thought the earth
lined up. Now, there is a slight
angle you can’t shake.
A word appears, imposed
on what you once knew.
More at https://dehartreadingandlitresources.blogspot.com.
Not Everything That Glitters Is Gold | Janice Canerdy
Some lessons we attempt to teach our kids
they’ll learn the hard way through experience
as we did. Then we’ll hurt as their hearts break
and love them as they struggle to make sense
of life with all its unexpected turns,
of friends and lovers who deceive and lie,
who leave them feeling life is just a sham,
that happiness and love have passed them by.
It isn’t just the young who are deceived.
We’re not exempt—we who are growing old—
from lessons taught by life: sometimes it’s hard
to tell what’s genuine and what’s fool’s gold.
Argot | JD DeHart
I’ve learned some
traces of travel language
but still sit alone
in a room full of others,
I have caught some
syllables here and there,
can imitate certain sounds
and movements…
But a sentence? Oh,
forget it, I’m lost in posing,
too busy try to make
meaning of the minute
regions of a language
I’m craving and resisting.
Pedagogue | JD DeHart
He is now climbing the tree, tasting
the sky, and now edging sideways
out onto the slick rock, held up only
by a single twig, asking about origins
of waterfalls, and now reading
about Dresden, now reciting Lilith myths,
now standing, clapping, pontificating
measuring the content of young minds,
lapping the stream of consciousness
like a well-dressed canine