It is “where are they now?” Wednesday. Someone from my past whom I still think about.
Year seven, “nurture group”, in geography
Are doing “America” in PowerPoint.
Emad has found a picture of the flag.
Toni, a dollar sign, (and, I inform her,
A photograph of downtown Tokyo.)
Jamie (or Jimbob) superimposes
A handgun on a cartoon hamburger.
And Waqaas, (unexpectedly political
When not flicking the back of Piotr’s head),
Pairs George W. Bush
With a frowny face from clipart.
“Bad man.” He tells me. “Very very bad”
Then I come to look at Sevgi’s work.
A new girl, late of Abbeydale Grange.
Before that, she has told me, Kurdistan.
She’s here because her English isn’t good.
She wil not cope in mainstream, they’ve decided.
She talks me through her work.
Page one. The genocide of native people. The trail of tears. Thanksgiving. Wounded knee.
Page two, the first invasion of Iraq.
Page three, the burning towers. The latest bombs.
And then, page four, it’s Condoleeza Rice.
And Sevgi looks at me, her wide brown eyes
Filled with her earnest anger.
“I do not like this Bush.
I have him here, I shake him with my hands.
I shout his face
‘Why are you do these things?’
But he not know.
He white. He not know to be poor.
To have the persons say
‘You woman.’ ‘You black.’ ‘You not can do’
I angry, but I know. He think is right.
But this. This Condoleeza
She is black.
And she is woman
And she hear bad things all in her life.
And still she do bad things.
She is the worse.”
Later in the library she tells me
About her favourite book.
She wants an English copy.
But she only knows the name in Turkish.
“But it means
The person do bad thing
The person in bad trouble.”
I ask her for the author.
“Dostoyevsky”
The library at school has nothing for her.
She’s way beyond its reach.
Tom Juniper Poetry 