teacher

3 Poems by Maura Way

Slow Cooker

I left my heart in the general
pozole. I thought it would
be safe from harm. I got so
fat. Some pulling happened
while I thought about the crab's
immortality. I should be tender
by now. Silence is not peace. It is
the lack of courage in human meat.

 

Grand

Big Macs now
come in three

different sizes.
I don't want to

be a teacher. My
world can come

to an end. I'm just
documenting it. No

one cares about
superlative forms.

 

Babylon

The getaway will break me
into fourteen clay tablets. I
will have to arrange them to
create a narrative of a poppy.
Clearly prescribed life cycles
will emerge, but it will still
take a dogged wrongness to
organize a logical storyline.

Is it really releasing fear if you
step off the cliff, harnessed into
complicated belay system? I
know the trick is infallible,
but I don't believe in it. I'm
more apt to sleep on it. Only
blooms will hang overhead,
still & carabinerless legends.
-
Originally from Washington, D.C, Maura Way is a schoolteacher in North Carolina. Her poems have appeared in/on Drunken Boat, Verse, DIAGRAM, Ocean State Review, and The Chattahoochee Review. Her debut book of poetry, Another Bungalow, was released by Press 53 in 2017. She has been a teacher for 20 years.