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An Unexpected Lesson from a Graduate Education Class
Jeff Morgan

I cannot think of her name,
but every time
I put on the gardening gloves
that have been in the shed,
I think of her.

I fondle her words
on every finger
of the gloves,
pinching, rubbing, and twisting
to the palm,

spreading out the palm
and shaking the glove
above my feet,
ready to rise and crush
that which would fall out of the glove.

Her bare feet
on cool Texas pine,
I hear them slipping into her slippers,
and I feel the stinging bite
of a brown recluse

fiddling about within the warmth of the slipper.

When she returned to the classroom,
she had a cane, and
she told us how she almost died.

I shake my shoes, too.

—
Jeff Morgan is the author of American Comic Poetry (McFarland, 2015). He is currently under contract for his fourth book, whose working title is The American Novel and Sensitivity to Difference (also with McFarland). He is also the author of numerous essays, most recently having a chapter appear in Teach English with a Sense of Humor. However, he is most proud of his poetry. He has two poems forthcoming in Grist and another forthcoming in Proem. Morgan teaches at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, and lives with his wife, Dana, in Boynton Beach.

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