catapult magazine

To the Literature Student Who Asks Me Several Times a Week, “Why Would People Write Poetry Instead of Saying Things Directly? What Are We Supposed to be Getting Out of This?”

by David Howard Malone

It bothers me a little you haven’t noticed how tired
your fellow students are of you, how they cross their arms
and lean back in their chairs each time you start to speak.
For them, you are the false north that shipwrecks the class:
my compass swings toward your accusations and I abandon
the demarcated route of their quest to hand in an exam
on which they’ve replicated my lecture notes, a perfect reproduction
in their own handwriting. Your outrage, sputtering, red-faced,
imposes and impedes, though their annoyance is invisible to you. 

And while I know (there have been memos) your protests arise
from your chemistry or some eyeless urge to keep yourself whole
and clean, that what you’re crying out against is neither poetry nor me,
I’m still moved to tell you, day after day, that people in every culture
find the beauty in their languages, that knowing moral codes
is one thing and walking through disaster with an immoral person,
even an imaginary someone, is something more. I’m tired of my notes —
it’s thrilling to defend the things I love against attack, to stammer
out my credo while others mock and tease, to answer questions
with questions and mock right back. I don’t feel like an idol,
but try anyway to tear me down — who wouldn’t grow sick of sitting,
fat and swollen, frozen in one’s authority, unquestioned?