RULES FOR TEACHERS, SOMEWHERE IN THE USA, 2023

by Cecil Morris

Attending a drag show at Hamburger Mary’s, and later posting about it on social media, led to Kristi Maris losing her teaching job of nearly 20 years, she wrote on Facebook. —Houston Public Media, July 26, 2023

You shall not attend drag shows
as drag might rub off on you
like the contagion we disbelieve
and you might drag it then to school
where you indoctrinate children
in the unspeakable pleasures
of women’s undergarments
and torture shoes and cult behavior.
You shall not mention slavery
in the same breath as oppression
or affirmative action or
reparations though you can note
how slavery afforded some slaves
with advantageous skills they used
to their own betterment later.
You shall not criticize your boss
or your boss’s lackeys for their
support of policies or practices
either ignorant, ill-informed,
or cruel, or, really, speak any
words not explicitly spelled out
in the approved curriculum.
You shall as much as humanly
possible act and speak and dress
and think in the same Godly way
as your employer does or says
he or she or they does or do. 

Cecil Morris taught high school English for 37 years. Now retired, he spends his time writing poems and shaking his head at the news. He has poems in or forthcoming from Cimarron Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Sugar House Review, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

WHEN ASKED WHAT SKILLS WE GAINED FROM SLAVERY

by MEH

how to run [from slave catchers, the klan, crooked cops,

especially when finding the distinction difficult]. how to

keep our own counsel. to code-switch. to sing songs

in mother-tongues they will emulate and sharecrop

in blackface or while ignoring their origin—jazz, blues,

rock and roll, R&B, rap. how to hide our babies from

[see original list], christening them with names proper

to replace stolen drums, lands, gods. how not to list

the skills we already possessed, were compelled to

employ—navigation, cultivation, curing smallpox—

knowing they will fall on ungrateful ears. how to turn

our every cheek. to be more Christ-like than those who

disgraced the religion they forced upon us. to embody

the fruits of the spirit—especially patience and self-

control—in arms, legs, backs chiseled in cottonfields,

defined by bearing the lash of injustice. how to refrain

from calling down a legion of angels, or easily poisoning

their food, or slitting an oppressor’s throat in their sleep,

at least for now.

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections including Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020) and the Colored page (Sundress Publications, 2022). He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes. MEH’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in The New Verse News, Cola Literary Review, The Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Pangyrus, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Shenandoah, and The Worcester Review among others. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.