The playground was my prison.
I attempted to shelter myself at its edges.
If I could only make it through fifteen more minutes
without hearing once again
those voices
- shrill, mocking, jabbing, wily, taunting -
and those names
all those names
names, names, names.
Sonsabitches,
I should have yelled
back at them,
and shook my fist,
and kicked up dust,
and spit,
but I couldn't.
And if I could've -
well, I would have had to be a different person,
not myself,
and this playground not my prison.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
The suffering schoolteacher is very well communicated in this poem. One empathises and agrees with the final verdict about the prison we find ourselves in.