By Dave Malone
Beneath our desks, knees angle
and tower like cricket legs.
Dust bits float, join, break away
above our sneakers. We till
the linoleum with gooey fingertips
from bottled glue or the remains
of Mrs. Anderson’s no-bake cookies—
until she booms, “Quiet,” and invites
the big silence. Inside this empty,
we still smell the heated cookies,
the Elmer’s fumes giving us the dizzies.
It is a low hum at first—
like an evening tractor laboring
several farms over—then a roar
as the sky paints the classroom
windows cocoa. Some of us
scrape wings together and squeak;
others cry—I yearn to be brown.
Dave Malone has contributed poems to such journals as San Pedro River Review, Plainsongs, and Front Range Review. His most recent book is You Know the Ones (Golden Antelope Press, 2017). A master’s graduate of Indiana State University, Dave lives in West Plains, Missouri, and hosts the weekly Friday Poems series on his website.
Portage Magazine 