poetry Global Experts

Schools may be in trouble, assesses Vermont poet Ann Fisher, but not the fault of students who create their own “precipitation” despite “all the measured wisdom/ we’ve provided.”

A Fisher
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Global Experts 

By AFisher

they say schools are in trouble

pandemic learning

hours lost remote

our youth injured 

by some outside evil

 

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experts agree-

but have they seen the 12-year-old raging,

Black Summer hot, singe-ing like Dixie

political flags duct-taped 

to adolescent necks

the way global warming burns

all saplings to smoke?

have they measured

the expanse of our red-hot coals— 

the ill will 

democracy storming

bounties promised 

to corral “bad” women— 

have they seen porn

lick its way into the corners

of school-issued chromebooks

while parents tether their time

to fuel our economy?

measure this, then

this pyrocumulus cloud

born from the breath of youth

powered by our own smoldering

and the flash of aTikTok challenge

no wonder they create

their own atmosphere down here

their own precipitation

falling like acid in lockered halls

behind the thin cloth masks

and all the measured wisdom

we’ve provided

Ann Fisher lives in the foothills of the Green Mountains, though she is not the first, nor the last, to call this land home. She is the fiction co-editor for Mud Season Review based in Burlington, Vermont. Ann’s work has appeared in over twenty-five journals, including ZigZaglitMag, AboutPlaceJournal, The South Shore Review, and Plainsong, among others. Her poetry is forthcoming in The Mountain Troubadour. Ann’s first book of poems, “Splintered Moments” was a finalist in Sundog Poetry Center's Poetry Book Award. Her fiction piece “Cancellations” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. One lonely love poem won the PSOV’s Spooner Memorial Award.