The classroom wall is a journal
that spurns me day after day.
These editors, I swear to God—

Please stop writing about death.
Is everything okay at home?

(How could anything be okay anywhere?)

This doesn’t rhyme.
This isn’t an ending.

(O, but it is.)

Their pet penpushers cluster, scribble,
bask in garish fluorescence, declaim
the tenets of capitalism by heart,

the heart being the organ
of good American learning.

Thus far they must’ve hung a hundred
hacky haikus, whilst my “Sonnet
for Lenore” is somewhere on the floor,

the latest language arts crime
scene, awash in crimson gore.

I have nothing bloodless enough
to hang on the wall for Parents’ Night.
Even my acrostic is too caustic. Woe.

The teacher strolls amongst the jejune,
a hissing mist of sibilance.

They fill their notebooks with treasure maps.
They will know where to find the money one day.
Things are looking up for them.

Things are looking out the window for me.
I shall major in portentous clouds,
minor in the kinesics of twisted old trees.

One day I’ll defend my thesis
wielding a fan of cursèd tarot:
“Variations on a Theme Oft Pondered.”

The theme, of course, is my epitaph.
She held many degrees.
Alas, they were all terminal.

At night I dream they hang me
on the wall for Parents’ Night.

————

Stacie Herrington writes horror fiction in addition to dark, speculative, and sometimes fun poetry. Her recent work appears in the Horror Writers Association Poetry Showcase XI, and hopefully some other places by now. She lives in Texas, the political hellscape of which tends to inspire her most terrifying writing. Occasional updates on Instagram: @herringtonstacie.