OK.
I'm going to-- two more poems and then--
OK.
This is-- I'm--
anyone Presbyterian here?
[LAUGHTER]
OK.
I'm a Presbyterian-- I used to teach English in my--
the Presbyterian Church in Oakland, Iglesia Presbiteriana.
And it was a good experience.
I taught for three years, volunteered.
And so this is a poem about that.
It's called Teaching English From an Old Composition Book.
And so I went to this closet and discovered
all this old composition books of these old Presbyterians
and this is about that.
"My chalk is no longer than a chip of fingernail,
chip by which I must explain this money, Monday, night,
the verbs to get, to where, to cut.
I'm not giving much.
These tired students knuckle- wrapped from work as roofers.
Sour from scrubbing toilets and pedestal sinks.
I'm given this room with five windows
a coffee machine that doesn't work,
a piano with busted strings.
The music of how we feel as the sun falls,
exhausted from keeping up.
I stand at the blackboard.
The chalk is worn to a fingernail, nearly gone.
The dust of some educational bone.
By then-- by and by I'm Cantiflas, the comic busybody
in front of the class.
I say, I get the coffee.
I pick up the coffee cup and sip.
I click my heels and say, I wear my shoes.
I bring an invisible fork to my mouth and say,
I eat the chicken.
Suddenly the class is alive.
Each one putting on hats and shoes,
drinking sodas and beers, cutting flowers and steaks.
A pantomime of scrumptious living.
At break, I pass out cookies.
Augustine, the Guatemalan, asked in Spanish, teacher,
what's tally-ho?
Tally-ho.
I look at the word and the composition book.
I raise my face to the bare bulb for a blind answer.
I stutter and say, es como adelante.
[LAUGHTER]
Augustine smiles then nudges a friend in the next desk.
Now smarter by one word.
After the cookies are eaten, we move ahead to prepositions,
under, over, between.
Useful words when la migra opens the doors of their idling vans.
At 10 to 9, I'm tired of acting, and they're
tired of their roles.
When the class ends, I clap my hands
of chalk dust and two students applaud,
thinking that it's a new verb.
I tell them adelante, and they pick up their old books,
they smile and in return cry tally-ho
as they head to the door."
[APPLAUSE]
[INAUDIBLE]
I knew that three years of volunteer work
would end up with a good poem and it took a while but--