Curriculum
Three
Unicorns and dolphins are not
real, she says proudly, knowing
something. Actually, dolphins are real,
I say (omitting for now).
Dinosaurs and monsters are not
real, she tries again. Dinosaurs
were real, I say, but
they all died. That won’t
happen to us, I add
quickly (omitting for now). You
are right, though, monsters aren’t
real. I don’t say: unless
you count the human ones,
the men I hope you
never meet alone at night.
Six
We call the unproductive ones
spinning worries, those that don’t
warn you about anything real.
I tell my daughter to
picture them around the table
vying rudely for attention like
stereotypical relatives of a certain
political persuasion. Picture yourself
taking charge, standing tall, telling
them to shut the fuck
up. I don’t say it
quite like that, she’s only
six. But she knows what
I mean, growing into her
power, out of her fear.
Ten
In fifth grade, the boys
learn to spit, mucousy globules
of saliva decorating the crosswalk
between the portables, marking their
territory, the world they are
soon to inherit. The girls
learn from them: that the
teacher is to be graded
on her bulging abdomen, that
they shouldn’t adjust itchy new
bras lest they snap and
draw the wrong kind of
attention. They learn to wait
for each other in bathrooms,
not speaking of the reasons.
Twenty-Two
The year I live in
France, I start to feel
a tingling in my fingertips
as though they are trying
to float away. When I
put my hands into my
pockets, I can‘t parse the
fine details of things, the
teeth of my keys biting
into my hands and I
have to pull them out
to see what they are.
The doctor says I am
just cold, but we never
know what follows us home.
Thirty
What can we say today
that hasn’t been said a
thousand times before? To survive,
we don’t need to read
poetry as the sunlight slips
silently from the pine tops.
We don’t need to spin
on a disk down the
snowy hill, again and again,
not salmon fighting the current.
We don’t need to gather.
We don’t need to light
candles, sprinkle cinnamon sugar, wrap
sparkling bulbs around the birches.
But we do, we do.
Thirty-Eight
Youth is wasted on the
young they say. I know
who they is now, it’s
me in my midlife crisis.
Did not know how much
time I had. How little
set form. That a body
is not a machine carrying
the self but the whole
self. Last year I broke
two ribs just by coughing.
I realize Youth is wasted
on the young is wasted
on the young. What, I
wonder, is wasted on me?
© Franzi Roesner
Franziska (Franzi) Roesner is a professor of computer science at the University of Washington. She was a poet first, though, and has returned to poetry recently. Her poetry has appeared or will appear in Choeofpleirn Press, Eunoia Review, The Marbled Sigh, and Rust & Moth. She lives in Seattle with her husband, two daughters, and one remaining cat.
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