Elizabeth Langemak
Poetry
Elizabeth Langemak lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Green Hole
I give my students a quiz and they fall to the bottom of a green
hole where answers might grow anywhere.
One student looks at me. Another stares out the window, where it
is greener, a wild flowering. Some cast their hope toward the door.
What they should know wraps the room like fingerless hands
choking the air.
When I took quizzes myself, I too kept my eyes where I wanted the
answer to be. I watched my hand and I learned
that a quiz is a way of looking inside oneself. A way to practice
what action to take if you find nothing there.
hole where answers might grow anywhere.
One student looks at me. Another stares out the window, where it
is greener, a wild flowering. Some cast their hope toward the door.
What they should know wraps the room like fingerless hands
choking the air.
When I took quizzes myself, I too kept my eyes where I wanted the
answer to be. I watched my hand and I learned
that a quiz is a way of looking inside oneself. A way to practice
what action to take if you find nothing there.
Jesus’s Lambs
I skim both arms under our cat’s belly and raise them like a
forklift. This cat, I say, likes to be held like one of Jesus’s lambs.
The cat exhales
between my elbows. You look up from your paper and say, I don’t
think Jesus did a lot of lamb holding.
The cat’s legs hang fixed as furniture. His black hair suspends a
constellation of dust and he does not sigh again. He has devised an
expression
for waiting, eyelids in half-sleep like the patient Jesus in all of
those paintings you don’t remember. In each, Jesus doesn’t look
up but holds only a lamb
in his view. Like the cat, he understands that if he can persist my
attention will shift. Soon I will turn and leave him to his sleep.
forklift. This cat, I say, likes to be held like one of Jesus’s lambs.
The cat exhales
between my elbows. You look up from your paper and say, I don’t
think Jesus did a lot of lamb holding.
The cat’s legs hang fixed as furniture. His black hair suspends a
constellation of dust and he does not sigh again. He has devised an
expression
for waiting, eyelids in half-sleep like the patient Jesus in all of
those paintings you don’t remember. In each, Jesus doesn’t look
up but holds only a lamb
in his view. Like the cat, he understands that if he can persist my
attention will shift. Soon I will turn and leave him to his sleep.