Office Hour

About the Author

My student says he wrote a poem

about me, but not as I am, not

this tired maestra talking to the blackboard

deafened by the echo of her own voice

but as a poet blowing her bamboo flute

on a hill. My student, a Chicano, is sitting

in my office, his eyes focused

on shelves of books, "Do you read all these?"

I don't say these are only textbooks,

my real books are at home, nor do I name

all the poets I love. He can take in

only a few now - Baca, Soto, Rodriguez.

The fluorescent lights above us

hum a broken tune, something like

"America the Beautiful" or "Time on My Hands."

It is late. Everyone has gone home

to shore up their other lives, and East L.A.

is quiet again. What a dream -

a teacher and student meeting at the edge

of a battle zone where drivebys and tortillas,

quinceaneras and someone's mijito cycling a future

on blood stained sidewalks go on.

"I want to write," he says, "but I can't leave

my turf." I don't say you won't,

even when you're a thousand miles from here.

What a dream - a young Chicano

crosses the border to me, a Chinese,

three decades away, to give me a poem,

knowing we are both Americans with a song

to pass on, even if it's still out of tune.

We hear the music in the attention of this hour.

What a dream - When I drove home

the 10 East was jammed with trucks and exhaust

and the San Gabriel mountains a vague vision.

That hill will have to stay in a poem

for a while. But think, without

the blaring horns and broken glass, without

these messages of hope spread across my desk

and the shadow who fills the barrel

of this pen, I could have missed it all.

from Blue Mesa Review

Literature from the Borderlands

Number 9, 1998