By Sarah Beddow
Dispatch
re: Biblical Plagues
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
- Philip Larkin
In the bathroom I flushed the toilet and it backed up / the water turned to / blood The toad / sits heavy in my chest Another / toad squats so hard upon my colleague that she will quit / tomorrow / to be rid of it The toads / squat on us all The rain / fell in sheets and we were / cast into darkness during 5th period / lunch The terror of being a freshman / in the blackened bathroom / Last week / another bedbug / No one informed us but we knew it was / in the back hallway / where the previous plague of bedbugs flourished and closed the school / for days / Yet another colleague / crushed by the plague of the toad / left our school / to find her new classroom / swarming with snakes / Or you know / one creepy snake skin the old teacher left behind / The actual swarms of snakes / are at one of our elementary schools / Tomorrow is a potluck an / obvious analog for a plague of locusts / starving for whatever we can get
Dispatch
re: the Blossom of Youth
If we had wanted to we could / have toured the after-prom party at my high school Saturday night It was / open to the public Party like it's 1999 / My students were born the year I graduated My teenage years / are their party decorations and / costumes What is this generation's equivalent of Ethan Hawke / wide-mouth kissing Winona Ryder We / watched Ethan Hawke as Hamlet / in AP Lit and all guffawed / But yinz / you are missing the brilliance / of moody gen x Hawke playing moody / Hamlet The white man / with feels / shall inherit the earth And they didn't understand that Ethan Hawke was perfect / and garbage all rolled into one That's the / point Now / could we drink hot blood Monday and all I want to do is weep watching YouTube videos of / people singing in unison / I watched the cast of “The Color Purple” sing “Purple Rain” while I ate a strawberry popsicle on my prep Only / two days until the AP Lit exam / and / their / success hinges on whether they can / capture complexity in their essays / like how my childhood apple blossoms bloomed weeks ago and I had no time / to stand there and inhale their perfume
Sarah Beddow is a poet, mother, and teacher. She has written a lot of poems and essays about her body, rape culture, and abortion. Her chapbook, What's pink & shiny/what's dark & hard was published by Porkbelly Press, and she is the founding editor of the Pittsburgh Poetry Houses, a public art project. Find her online at impolitelines.com.