The Sad Lobster Speaks

Image by Carl Van Vechten--Truman Capote (1948)

The Sad Lobster Speaks


Don’t ask students to feel the breeze
on Tennyson’s back at Coole, or smell
the faint must of feathers because swans
are gross. Ask them, instead, to think
of the thin blond boy with the ohmyGod smile
that makes them want to break into
his house; two vast and trunkless legs
of wannabe. Party girls like creepers
go from door to door. They’ve seen the best minds
of their generation ruined by bad hair days
and zits. They are so totally a pair
of ragged, like, claws and stuff.

At best, you honor old, dead, white guys
with a smattering of old, dead, white women
peppered in. At best, the kids are yawning at
you. At best,
they can’t relate, and you must guide their pure
hearts to the waters of the lethe, help them
forget themselves and learn
to listen. At best, redemption is a multiple
choice test. At worst,
spring is coming, through the classroom window,
you can see the trees wake, shaking stiff limbs
in the wind, blanketed with the noise of new
life. A rabbit tears across the lawn. A moment passes,
and a fox trots behind, nose in the air. Now:
explicate this scene.

C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on Poemeleon