Very in Pieces by Megan Frazer Blakemore Read Free Book Online Page B

I’m concerned. You all know each other, and I’ll know you soon enough, as well as any teacher knows any student.”
    I like Ms. Staples because she’s a fan of Nonnie’s but nevermakes a big deal of it to me. I’ve had other English teachers who expect me to be like the second coming or something, and are inevitably disappointed in my work, which isn’t bad, just not ready for the anthology of Best American anything. I guess that’s the same feeling Grace was talking about.
    â€œThe English department has done some rearranging, and we’ve decided to approach material thematically rather than chronologically.” She has made her way back to her desk and now picks up another stack of papers, these ones printed on green. “We’re going to start with some poetry. Specifically, women’s poetry.” She pauses and glances at me. I wonder if she knows how sick Nonnie is.
    As soon as the packet lands on my desk, I begin to flip through it to see what poems are included. Past Emily Dickinson, past Elizabeth Bishop, past Plath. There she is.
    I exhale: none of the sex poems she’s so famous for. Nonnie’s exploits are okay by me, but I really don’t want to discuss her sex life in English class.
    Ms. Staples folds herself back into her chair. “To say good-bye to summer, I’d like to start off with one of Imogene Woodruff’s poems. Page seventeen of your packet. Now then,” she says cheerily. “Why don’t we read it aloud?” She surveys the room, looking for a reader, and I feel people’s eyes on me. I make a show of looking away so that Ms. Staples knows that I really, really don’t want to read.
    Dominic saves me by raising his hand. Ms. Staples claps joyfully. “A volunteer!”
    He clears his throat and holds up his paper. “Fireflies.” He reads the title, nods at Ms. Staples, and begins reading:
    I shed my cardigan sweater
    Slip out of my sensible shoes
    Leave them on the sun-charred grass
    And march
    Past the summer garden
    Gone to waste,
    Past the pine tree garlanded
    By student words
    â€”Always words, words, words—
    Past the puddles of feint praise.
    I go to join the pixies
    In their
    Polyester nightgowns.
    (You scoff.
    The wry smile tells me you
    think I’m telling you tales.
    Yet this time it’s
    Truth.)
    They hold glass jars
    And capture tiny lights
    Detain dancing fireflies
    Until their light fades.
    (And what I want to say to you is:
    You cannot catch my lightning in glass.)
    Dominic lowers his paper, and, once again, looks right at me. He has figured out, I am sure, that I am one of the pixies. I shift in my seat, and stare at the poem, trying to reread it, but the words just swim in front of me.
    I know the cardigan she mentions. It’s army green and she wore it rolled up because the sleeves were too long. A moth ate a small hole through the front pocket. The polyester nightgowns, too: mine had a rainbow, Ramona’s a winged unicorn.
    These are details that people would like to know. They would like me to share my insider view of the poem, but I won’t.
    The class discusses the poem’s meter (could one be discerned, and the places where it broke it, and why), the allusions and metaphors, and the emotion underlying it.
    In town, you can buy her books everywhere, even at the grocery store. The college store sells postcards proclaiming Essex to be “Woodruff Country.” Every year, we have to attend the Woodruff Festival, where Nonnie gives an award to some aspiring poet who proceeds to read one of his or her (usually dreadful and quite long) poems. Everyone thinks they know her. I just want my memories of the woman who braided my hair and brought me down to the large outdoor swimming pool—which was really more of a swimming hole—and sipped gin from awater bottle while she watched me and Ramona splash around. She always traveled with gumdrops, and would pick