Fall 2007 / Spring 2008

Teaching Poetry in Georgia Schools

by Melisa (“Misha”) Cahnmann-Taylor

My house is like a pond, she says. Is so pretty.
I ask her to say it again.
Can you say that again?
Did you say “pond”?

Round body of water behind a house in Vermont
where a white girl skinny dips and geese
make merry with picnics:
How can a house be like a pond?

She tells me Grandmom bakes custard pies.
She has a green carpet in the kitchen.
Her daddy likes candy. There's a waterfall by the door.

I ask her to say it again.
Can you say that again?
Did you say “waterfall by the door”?

I don't know if there is water by her house,
a splashing image in a cheap frame from the fleamarket,
or the sound of a neighbor's pipes
flushing through the wall.

She writes about rainbows and spells rain rian and bow
as a separate word and door with two r's and one o
and she sits next to a boy who writes that he is from Mixeco.

Her skin is the color of pine bark; eyes framed in small
gold globes like two ponds filled with a life made visible
through close looking. I know how to live in this school trailer,
but I'm from a house like a jewel box.

She asks me to say it again.
Can you say it again?
Did you say “jewelbox? Thas nice.