The High School Class Graduates
without masks tonight. For some,
it is an unveiling, boys with new beards,
girls with touches of blush & lip sheer.
They are no longer children, flippant
with smartphones & Instagram.
Most understand the lyrics of the songs
they sing. Because of the pandemic,
they graduate under the lights
on the football field, folding chairs
distanced between hashmarks. Tonight,
they worry their names will be mis-
pronounced over the loudspeakers,
vowels falling off a stranger’s tongue,
consonants sputtered like quarter notes.
The girls pin back their hair & slip-on
difficult heels. The boys swagger
like they imagine they must.
There shouldn’t be space between the lines, I couldn’t fix it
The English Teacher Buys a Pair of Cowboy Boots
I bought a pair of cowboy boots that I
couldn’t afford because I needed to boost
the Wild West in me. Nothing changed, except
on those rare moments when I leaned back
with my legs extended, feet raised to the lip
of my desk, having shot the eye out of a
term paper, or, when I caught myself
in a reflection at the 311 Club, my boots
dark with purpose in the doorway. I could
have been dusting off my black hat, rather
than hesitating before taking the next step
towards the woman at the end of the bar
a long ride across Kansas.
The old gunslinger joked about dying
with his boots on, not down-in-the-heel loafers
crushed beside the dry erase board,
or walking the hallway
to the OK Corral to work ninth graders
at a basketball game
all bright lights and whistles and popcorn.
Wild Geese
I cannot help but follow a flight of geese,
especially, when they’re just above the treetops,
pumping their wings, forming their characteristic V.
Who doesn’t look up at this moment? I suppose
only those of us who are completely distracted,
absorbed by purpose, demands, a number cruncher
with a shirt and tie, wrangling keys from his
pocket, an overbearing boss, his weight
bearing down on his shoulders. Once, when I was
in New York, a man passed me on the sidewalk.
He had a cat sitting on his head. The cat, a weight,
was his Village stich. They walked with practiced
ease, a man with a fur turban, a cat with a view.
When geese flew up the river, the man turned
at the waist, the cat rotating with his head.
Geese flew where geese fly. That was that.
Al Ortolani is a 2019 recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Series Award. His most recent collection, The Taco Boat, has just been released from New York Quarterly Books. His poems have appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Rattle, New Letters, and the Chiron Review.