Eva Jackson: 0026

We bit the small pink sponge of the China-berries
Brought on fainting fits with fast breaths and then holding it,
I ran after the scuffed soccer ball
With no sense of where it was going.
We circled each other in a “battle of wills”
We pressed our eyeballs until the white lightning came,
Sifted through sand for glinting yellow pieces.
We ran and kissed one another
Skirted the end of the field
Where shallow men, warned of, hid behind
The diamond gaps in the green wire fence
And the highway’s noise moved down the slope.
You told us, “by god, if they come over that fence, you run!
I’ll pick up the small ones, and you run.”
You were our teacher, who were these hordes
That would come?
A colonial hangover, the knowledge that,
Sooner or later, with small children
And their teachers basking in the sun
We’d be looking down the barrel of a gun?