“Death, If You Don’t Mind, Please Come To The Front Of The Class”
teacher adjusts the half
moons of her glasses, her chalk
ticking against the slate
in three crumbling clicks, &
dust sprinkles like incense
ash cast from a silver thurible
onto the sooty erasers’
plastic catafalque ledge, &
the boy pushes himself off
by his elbows, his black sweat-
shirt, sizes too big, gathers
over his bony hips, &
the rheumy-eyed class mute,
expressionless, turns aside, turns
pale, turns to limestone white,
blue-veined note paper, &
the boy steps to teacher’s
tallies, graphite powder,
chalk dust, graveling the path
beyond a roster of the listless &
the inattentive, the absent
About the Poet:
Patrick Thomas Henry holds an MA in English Literature from Bucknell University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University. Currently, he is pursuing his Ph.D. at the George Washington University. His fiction, poetry, and reviews have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Green Briar Review, Revolution House, The Writing Disorder, The Writing Disorder Anthology, Northville Review, Sugar House Review, Modern Language Studies, and The Short Review. He also contributes to The Story Prize’s blog. He lives in Alexandria, VA, with his girlfriend and their cat.
About the Sound of Sugar:
We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it.
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