Skip to main content
  • 25 Lines or Fewer

On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance

By Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Breathe deep even if it means you wrinkle
your nose from the fake-lemon antiseptic
 
of the mopped floors and wiped-down
doorknobs. The freshly soaped necks
 
and armpits. Your teacher means well,
even if he butchers your name like
 
he has a bloody sausage casing stuck
between his teeth, handprints
 
on his white, sloppy apron. And when
everyone turns around to check out
 
your face, no need to flush red and warm.
Just picture all the eyes as if your classroom
 
is one big scallop with its dozens of icy blues
and you will remember that winter your family

took you to the China Sea and you sank
your face in it to gaze at baby clams and sea stars

the size of your outstretched hand. And when
all those necks start to crane, try not to forget

someone once lathered their bodies, once patted them
dry with a fluffy towel after a bath, set out their clothes

for the first day of school. Think of their pencil cases
from third grade, full of sharp pencils, a pink pearl eraser.

Think of their handheld pencil sharpener and its tiny blade.  
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, "On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance" from Oceanic.  Copyright © 2018 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.  Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Poet Bio

Cropped image of Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil was born in Chicago to a Filipina mother and South Indian father. She earned her BA and MFA from The Ohio State University and was a Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is poetry editor of Orion magazine and is currently professor of English in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi. She lives with her husband and sons in Oxford, Mississippi.

See More By This Poet