i ask if there was a time they felt so
vulnerable they acted recklessly
& though it’s our third month together i break
the ice with my own ax, say how my middle
school crush liked me, too, though we never
spoke & how, at a dance, some friends made
the dj play a song just for us & i fled
not just the gym or the vomit i left in a urinal
but the school itself, how my white reeboks
whipped past the dairy barn carport & little
east neck traffic lights like ghostly nunchucks
till i dove headlong into my childhood bed
& all they want to know—my students—
is what song it was
song? i ask the dj, danny says
was it nirvana? it was 1986 i say
so lisbeth says paul anka?
& i’m like what? & start to feel like i’m 12
again, because if i’m honest, completely honest
it was whitney houston
& i’d had a crush on her, too, for years
& the song described dialing your crush’s
number & not speaking which i’d done
more times than i care to admit because
what was real life anyway but a dance
beyond the fenced-in sump of childhood
or battleground worse
than what i’d known?
how will i know i say & they go what?
& i say the song & they say oh
but i am an inside-out sock now
meaning we are a room of inside-out
socks, except for gerson, who
is a steel boot, who stares
at the page like it’s a casket
who, whenever i say try to remember
sprints from my classroom, his brother’s
last breath filling it like a song
Matt Pasca is the author of two full-length poetry collections—A Thousand Doors (2011 Pushcart nominee) and Raven Wire (2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist)—and work that has appeared in more than 50 publications. A 2003 New York State Teacher of Excellence, Pasca has taught Creative Writing, Mythology and Literature to high school seniors since 1997 and college students as an adjunct professor at Adelphi University. Matt co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Friday Night Fire, with his wife and fellow author Terri Muuss, and was named Long Island Poet of the Year by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in 2022. www.mattpasca.com @mrpasca (IG)