The state test approaches as an apparition, plangent

and blind.         Secretly

I admire those students who complain

 

You sing of Aeacus’ line and the wars beneath the walls of Ilium: but you do not tell me

how much I must pay for a jar of Chian wine…

 

and when I shall escape from the cold of the Pelignian Mountains.

 

I can give no wine, no coat.         There is no secret glory

except that moment you are not

diverted, or at least know whose hand diverts: what goddess

Nike wants.

 

As they practice the test, phones and pheromones

hum across the room.

 

You can almost smell the test ghosting

—a bleach of the air

 

as information sheds over us, and we need

a thread

to not get lost. Don’t you even think of stopping.

In brittle silence

 

our eyes appear larger, the exits wider, the breathes of others

aflutter in a cage

—and like them I break and lose focus, stare outside

 

at the bare-chested Tupac glued on a warehouse wall,

whose poems are stolen off my shelf

each spring.

 

If we were fully present, what would we even do with each other?

Don’t you even think of.