Francisco
Posted by Ben Alisuag (Alumnus) | Filed under '08 Fall: Notes from Underground, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
His legs shake at the back of the classroom-
He’s not nervous, just thinking.
Imagines a freedom highway escape from his teacher and the babble of math equations.
He could care less; his eyes instead make love to traffic lights that blink his favorite colors or the tongue popping in the first row that reminds him of playing baseball,
Yeah, he gets distracted.
And he wants to stop his shaking knees and bouncing toes,
Wants to stop hitting his classmates,
And laughing while the teacher’s talking,
Wants to make sense of the white lines on the blackboard.
But it looks like scrabble and he’s illiterate at board games
He can’t possibly pay attention because it costs too much.
It’s two dollars a pop for the cure.
Got him addicted to Ritalin that only works half the time.
And that’s why you’ll see this 10-year-old waiting in the Welfare Line.
Rebellion is this kid’s language and nobody understands him
No one can afford to buy him a chance.
So he’s going to the 4th grade…again.
Thank God he’s short because he’ll fit in better.
And hopefully the math problems will make more sense this year.
And even I lose my patience sometimes,
yelling that sounds more like praying.
Lectures that scar like belt whips grinding over his shoulder blades.
I love my nephew like his new addiction to prescription drugs.
But I wish he could fight the disease the same way he crushes elementary school jaw-lines on the playground.
Because Francisco is not retarded, so don’t fucking call him an idiot.
Thousands of children have minds just like his; he’s a complex genius.
His actions, we can’t understand, so we pop pills down his throat,
Never getting rid of the problem.
That Francisco’s name will never stand adjacent to 5 golden stars.
Or that everyday my mother calls and ask why can’t your nephew be more like you?
And I have held hands with this 10-year-old God.
Repeated 4th grade because his teacher can’t find enough time for his misplaced voice.
Instead, she drowns him in handouts and homework, when he can’t even read the directions.
But he can recite every line verbatim from the Incredibles.
And he can summarize the Gospel at church every Sunday morning.
And he can manipulate video games with fingers like God and always come out on top.
But give him the first paragraph of Curious George, and watch him struggle over the opening lines.
I always thought he hated me.
Spoke with a smart mouth and clinched fist.
But at 8, he shaved his head for a Mohawk, and told my sister he wanted to read all the books I read in college.
Too bad he can’t even spell the 3 letters of his diagnosis.
Because when he sits to read a book, words dance on the page like run-away convicts. His eyes are like hopeless prison wards; not enough batons to beat the criminals back into their sentences.
Call him Holden Caufield, the Catcher in the Eyes.
What hurts most is that he will never meet the Great Gatsby.
Never dine with Jane Austen and ballroom dance with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.
Stuck with two left feet, he will never ride shotgun in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Forget about Romeo.
Forget about Juliet.
That love story never happened.
Francisco will never make passion as real as Whitman or Sanchez.
Never read love as pure as Wuthering Heights.
He will struggle to read road signs like blind and fingerless children trying to form words by reading brail with their palms.
He’ll probably have his best man write his wedding vows for him
Probably lay tongue tied at the thought of having to read his mother’s eulogy.
Francisco will never know words.
He’ll never know songs,
He’ll never get to read this poem.
