Math Teacher

 

Who is this stranger from across the sea?

He has no tribe, no sons, no cattle — how

can we respect such a man? What can we

 

learn from such a man? What can be his power?

Does he think his chalk’s not a sjambok,

or that he’s no fat, beer-swilling Boer? Now

 

he smiles — we fear his smiles. We fear his talk,

his laughter so unlike our own, his skin

called white but not white — no, white is a flock

 

of egrets bearing news from heaven, thin

elegant necks, plumes for the king — not pink

like this umlumbi ghost, who broils in

 

the sun, looks like cooked impala tongue, stinks

like milk too long in the calabash. We

mistrust a man who tells us how to think.

 

 

© Michael Fleming

Brattleboro, Vermont

June 2010

 

(Appeared in The Salon, Autumn 2011)

 

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