“Rodrigo Fails to Meet the Learning Objective” by Ginny Lowe Connors, published in White Sail at Midnight, released in November 2024, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.
Rodrigo Fails to Meet the Learning Objective
by Ginny Lowe Connors
Numbers wheel across the whiteboard,
swerve of swallows arcing suddenly over the bridge
into the evening sky. He remembers that sky
from last night, settling over the city
in its startling hues of indigo and gold.
Without even trying, he memorized the birds,
their geometry of appear and disappear,
feathered unison in the fading light.
But right now Rodrigo doesn’t have the answer—
the integer, the positive number, the solution,
the refrain. All he has is the feeling
that chairs have nothing to do with living (yet here he sits),
that figures are meant to be moving
and that dance, although it’s not for boys,
not for boys like him, would be a better way to answer.
He knows this in all the muscles of his body,
in all the colors of his mind … but how to say it?
Rodrigo squirms in his seat, concentrates
on a wasp knocking itself against the window.
The light’s become a slippery plane, hard, indecipherable
but still the wasp keeps climbing and buzzing, feeling
its way along, looking for a way out.
from White Sail at Midnight by Ginny Lowe Connors (The Poetry Box, 2024)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher
