My Two GED Students, 1970

My Two GED Students, 1970


Cherie’s not home
when I get to her place
in the projects across from Gunckel School.
So I bullshit with George awhile
and he gets five dollars
from me for wine--
Pear Ripple, the new flavor.
And when she comes through the door—
twenty-three, tiny,
with her three kids
and her hysterectomy scar
showing above her lowriders—
we hide our orange plastic cups
and I have her read Langston Hughes:
A poem?
It ain't no poem here.

David sits in his wheelchair
at his mom’s dining room table.
We work on the beginning algebra
I taught myself the night before.
He drinks a mug of beer
for his kidneys
and laughs, choking,
about some asshole buddy of his
who made it out of Nam OK,
But signed on to some secret
mission to Cuba
and got his balls blown off,
and now he can walk,
but there’s nothing between his legs.