Caluatate By: Mylinh Nguyen

Calucation By: Mylinh Nguyen

My math teacher  said: calculate, solve and check.

No idea what I was looking at,

nowhere to start, I thought. My mind lite up

until I forgot. What’s x,y,z raised

To the power of three, times square root nine?

My mind is turning into scramble eggs.

Whole numbers, mixed numbers and absolute,

exponents, integers and factoring

tress? Unknown terms, expressions and what’s the root?

It all sounds like foreign language to me. 10

I’m running out of time much too fast.
So I’ll talk about digits and my

reaction, while I work these fractions. 

Parentheses, exponents and then what?

multiplication, addition what’s next?

subtraction, that is the proper order

for solving  an unknown foreign language.

Multiplying fractions can be easy

there is no need to get all queasy.

It is best to quickly simplify, then

the denominators, remain the same

there is no need more anymore change. 

Now add them to the top of the list but

that’s no reason to stop. Multiply two

positives they remain, negatives

and mixed signs spoils the big yummy batch.

I wish that I could remember more, but

that’s as far as I have gotten, times up

Oh no no! I forgot to check once more.

I must go now, but I feel so rotten.

__________________________________________
 Pencil BY MARIANNE BORUCH

My drawing teacher said: Look, think, make a mark.

Look, I told myself.

And waited to be marked.

Clouds are white but they darken

with rain. Even a child blurs them back

to little woolies on a hillside, little

bundles without legs. Look, my teacher

would surely tell me, they’re nothing

like that. Like that: the lie. Like that: the poem.

She said: Respond to the heaviest part

of the figure first. Density is

form. That I keep hearing destiny

is not a mark of character. Like pilgrimage

once morphed to mirage in a noisy room, someone

so earnest at my ear. Then marriage slid.

Mir-aage, Mir-aage, I heard the famous poet let loose

awry into her microphone, triumphant.

The figure to be drawn —

not even half my age. She’s completely

emptied her face for this job of standing still an hour.

Look. Okay. But the little

dream in there, inside the think

that comes next. A pencil in my hand, its secret life

is charcoal, the wood already burnt,

a sacrifice.