Sample Poems by Mark Chartier

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Kindergarten

Elicia, the first day of school, you were face down
on the floor
crying in front of my classroom
talking in gasps
of tears too old to be your own
saying that it was your mom’s boyfriend.
“It was all him.”
I laid down on the floor next to you,
my eyes teaming with yours.
You wouldn’t answer me with words,
Go ahead and touch this hand
if you want to come to my classroom and talk,
or this hand if you want me to give you space.

Your classroom teacher told me that no one would believe
the amount of meth your mom smoked
and heroin she intra-veined
when you were in utero
as your eyes would la la la down the hallway
laces loosening
your fingers gnawing at the staples holding
first-person narratives from the 1st graders on the bulletin boards,
your hair plopping
from shoulder to shoulder
in the tick of a second’s hand.

You’ve come to my classroom for 60 minutes every day since.
We usually work on reading or math
but it’s all life.
We start off with “Good Things” when I usually say
My Good Thing is that I get to teach awesome kids like you.
Your mouth jawing open
as if you’re about to ask if I’m lying.
Never leave your dreams behind.
 
Dear Perseverance, you took what God gave you
and made it even better.
Yes, you write your numbers from the bottom up,
but you still learned how to count 1-10
by jumping out each number.
You still learned how to decode consonant-vowel-consonant words
as though you wrote them yourself.
Sound it out.
“/w/ /i/ /g/?”
Mr. C. needs a…?
“Wig!”
And how your eyes time
when you call me crazy
because I sing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” in class
or re-enact the lifeboat scene between Rose and Jack in “Titanic”
Jackkkkkk! Jackkkkkkk!
Tourette-ing my neck with every gush,
you volley,
“Why do you do that Mr. C.?”
Because I get nervous.
“Why are you nervous?

You are a textbook blur between patience and hope
when you ask, “Are you a daddy, Mr. C.?”
The veins in your cheeks growing more apparent,
your bangs touching your eyebrows
and the fuzz on your forearms the other students like to riddle
as you sit smart in your chair
“My Good Thing is that I like Christmas,
Valentine’s Day,
and Mr. C.’s Birthday
and that’s it.”

It’s the last day of school,
and you’re tipping toes by my kidney table
story-eyed as you ask me what we are going to do today.
the expression on your face lucid
like a flame finding its shape,
You tell me your mom’s boyfriend finally moved out.
“You can’t make an apple hang like a peach.”
I ask you to draw a picture about what you’re going to do this summer.
after about five minutes, you walk up to me with your drawing.
Tell me about it…
You comma in the moment,
hoist your head,
and point.
“It’s a picture of you
and my mom
looking up
at the stars.”

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IV

You came to my classroom yesterday
to practice reading the poem you’d written
for the Valentine’s Day Poetry Reading at school.
We did a solo read,
a choral read,
then a partner read,
to make sure you had it
I-do, we-do, you-do.
And even though you came up with the words,
I wrote them out for you
spelling them correctly
in a code you scrimmaged with phonetically,
using your cross-checking skills
and context clues
to make it make sense
when you faced me like a grandfather
clock,
the merry-go-sound
of you saying I needed to have kids.

You’d never have known
that I had just exited a mediation meeting
with Human Resources
and your other teacher
about our irreparable working relationship.
You’d never know the choreography of the tears
that flexed with my forearm
as I wiped away what I could
without making friends with fear,
when HR said they were going to move me
because I couldn’t get over Ms. What’s-Her-Rain
making fun of my lazy eye
or because she turns her head 90 degrees away from me
whenever I speak to her.
Ivy, no one in this world can stop you
but you,
how you butterfly life
with the tear-jerk steps you term
a charm bracelet path,
canceling out the debt
of a sunset locked of every can’t,
the quelling of a struggle,
the wallflower-you,
you’re a both-hands-in-a-pocket type of prayer
that keeps people up,
juror-ed to the calculation of listening
and learning
and how the two are kinesthetically aware of the other.
Love is an equal math.

At the poetry reading,
you were sugared-up on Fun Dip and Capri Suns
and the fuss of your brother
pouting out words
his mouth four-kinds-of-angry closed
because he was missing football practice.
You sat there, waiting,
your eyes satellite-ing the room,
hair rebounding as you adjusted the microphone
until it was like you,
just right.
You took a hard swallow,
and gripped the mic
like the shatter of a mirror
losing its cracks,
put your mouth to it
and began plus-ing out the words
about being in NICU for five weeks
when you were born premature,
the needles they stuck you with,
a machine feeding you oxygen
and how the doctor
told your mother,
sad,
“like a leprechaun missing its gold,”
that you would not make it to the next
day.
But then your brother went to Walmart
and got a magic Teddy to make you better.
“It must have worked,” you read,
because the next day, you were still alive.
And when you got to a word
you couldn’t decode
you stood there
like a try gestating
as I needled up to you
my hands forming a hallway.
and whispered it in your ear,
They need to hear it from you.
“Miracle”
That was when I got stuck
on the Geist of your eyes, a saltwater green,
undertow-ing a smile submiss with why,
the day I would have to tell you
that I wasn’t going to be your teacher next year.

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Schism

I was seven years old
when my mother took me to an attorney’s office.
The man sat behind a cherrywood desk
that seemed to stretch from wall to wall.
He had stacks of papers
that only allowed me to see him neck up
and his Rolodex that he flipped through
while penning numbers down
on his hand.
When he saw me under his desk,
he offered me a rubber band to play with,
blowing pipe smoke at me
as his cat prowled between the legs of his chair.
My mother told him my father was a crook…
IRS, mafia, double identities…
anything that didn’t end nice,
like a sickness of its own stir.

As the appointment was ending,
the attorney bent down to shake my hand,
but I snugged it inside my pocket
as I backed away
and stepped on his cat’s tail
which took its claws to me.
My mother asked how she would pay him.
In a voice profited by time,
he said he would take the gold from my father’s teeth,
as I stood cemented
red herring the dribble of blood from my wrist
because I thought he might start there.

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Bulbil

Your feet were hockey-ing mine,
legs playing shaky
making the kidney table tremor,
your chair pushed in so tight
your elbows nearly became
my teacher’s manual.
You were licking your fingers before each time you spoke,
your gaze adrift
appraising the corners of the classroom
while your hair damsel-ed
as your echolalia took form.
Let’s go ahead and do “Good Things” guys.
“‘Good Things’, yeah, yeah, let’s do ‘Good Things!’”
Your arms flapping
while you rocked forward
the side eye of now, asking me if you could go first.
“My ‘Good Thing’ is that I have autism!”
Connor sneered back, “Autism means you’re stupid!”
Your nose rollercoaster-ing up, you countered,
“Autism is just another way
of being human.”

AlleyKat, I remember all 32 invitations for your birthday party
you handed out to me and your classmates,
that most kids tossed in the trash,
how you used to hiss and shrill
under the “Think Time” desk
until I offered my hand for you to rejoin the group.
And lost in the mend,
you’d cover your face with your fingers
bawling between breaths,
“You’re not invited to my birthday party anymore!”
The bondage of defenses
thinking I couldn’t see you
while you peered at me to see
if I had forgiven your tantrum yet.
AlleyKat, Do you remember why Mr. C. is scared of cats?
“Why?”
Because he’s a scaredy cat!
As I garnished your shoulders with the weighted scarf.

You live a phrased life,
buttressed between the literal and the little
details that weed a path of schema,
a feeling of wishy, twice removed
waiting on if
to be when.
You are the fine edge of glass,
sharp easy
and definite in boundary,
a reflection eschewing to a still.

“What’s your ‘Good Thing’, Mr. C.?”
My “Good Thing” is that I went to AlleyKat’s birthday party
and got to watch her blow out the candles on her birthday cake.
“Yes, and I caught you blowing on your ice cream
as if it was hot! Hot!”
Yes, you did.
Your voice helicoptering,
“What would you have wished for if it was your birthday, Mr. C.?”
And I considered how I was the only person from school
at your party
and thought about your IEP meeting three weeks ago
when your mother,
her heart complicit to a reservoir of delirium
as she told me about the night you tried to kill yourself
by burying a fistful of Klonopins under your gullet.
Her tears voluble,
lunging for intervention,
and my wish was that you would love yourself
enough to live
to un-invite me to your next birthday party,
and the next,
and that you would let your mother tell you
you’re beautiful again.