Free She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems by Caroline Kennedy Page B

and Guyana meet. Tell her the truth, that you never knew where she was from until you asked, and when you finally asked it was way later than you wanted. Put the principal in class with all the run-down teachers, no pencils, paperless notebooks. Don’t give him books because you know he is lazy. Call him lazy. Because he is. Make him walk in and out of the metal detectors, saying, “Next school year I will do better, and serve you better.” Make him mean it. Show up. Pencils and papers at the ready.

At the Café
    PATRICIA KIRKPATRICK
after Adelia Prado
    I must look like I’m confident,
    white cup for tea on the table before me,
    my son in his indigo bunting,
    asleep in the stroller.
    When I take out my pen
    I must look like a woman
    who knows what her work is
    while citron and currant
    bake in ovens behind me.
    Newspaper, lily—
    I read in the book that poetry is about the divine.
    God came to the window while I was in labor.
    Tenderness, tenderness!
    I have never forgotten that
    sparrow among the clay tiles.
    Who knows my name knows I mash
    oatmeal, change diapers,
    want truly to enter divinity.
    God knows it too, knows that
    wherever I go now I leave out
    some part of me.
    I watch my son’s face like a clock;
    he is the time I have.
    If I choose this window, this black-and-white notebook,
    I must appear to be what I am:
    a woman who has chosen a table
    between her sleeping child
    and the beginning of everything.

Worked Late on a Tuesday Night
    DEBORAH GARRISON
    Again.
    Midtown is blasted out and silent,
    drained of the crowd and its doggy day.
    I trample the scraps of deli lunches
    some ate outdoors as they stared dumbly
    or hooted at us career girls—the haggard
    beauties, the vivid can-dos, open raincoats aflap
    in the March wind as we crossed to and fro
    in front of the Public Library.
    Never thought you’d be one of them,
    did you, little lady?
    Little Miss Phi Beta Kappa,
    with your closetful of pleated
    skirts, twenty-nine till death do us
    part! Don’t you see?
    The good schoolgirl turns thirty,
    forty, singing the song of time management
    all day long, lugging the briefcase
    home. So at 10:00 PM
    you’re standing here
    with your hand in the air,
    cold but too stubborn to reach
    into your pocket for a glove, cursing
    the freezing rain as though it were
    your difficulty. It’s pathetic,
    and nobody’s fault but
    your own. Now
    the tears,
    down into the collar.
    Cabs, cabs, but none for hire.
    I haven’t had dinner; I’m not half
    of what I meant to be.
    Among other things, the mother
    of three. Too tired, tonight,
    to seduce the father.

The Age of Great Vocations
    ALANE ROLLINGS
    You’ve seen the skirts go up and down
    In bread lines, soup lines, cheese lines, shanty towns.
    No one can say you aren’t seeking work.
    The answers come by mail at noon: No interview.
    The best companies never respond; you respect them.
    Some days, you don’t bother to open the letters,
    Just tear them to bits and go out for a walk.
    It’s a small fraud by the world’s standard:
    You can’t do things like ask for directions,
    So you call yourself an adventure-collector.
    Failure’s a field with real opportunities
    For a girl with a pile of business magazines
    Which she will probably have to burn for heat.
    Your luck will get either worse or better.
    The world is none of your business;
    It doesn’t give you a living.
    Someone calls your bluff, asks for references.
    You read up on yourself in the library.
    With lies, you can double your existence.
    In an endless dream of introductory letters,
    The applicants sit in all their best clothes,
    Their ages against them, their loneliness
    Repeated many times. The managers walk around, choosing.
    You say you’ve done singing telegrams and balloon bouquets
    (you’ve done strip-o-grams, sold flowers at traffic lights).
    You’re a cake decorator, you’ve been to zoo school
    (you’re a