“All right, gang. Welcome back to our Friday Poetry Cafe, sponsored—and hosted—by Ilca’s Coffeehouse.”
Mr. Ellis claps his hands together at the front of the room as the last person takes her seat. He’s wearing his black turtleneck—hopefully his only one—thick-rimmed glasses, and an honest-to-God beret, which he claims Ilca knitted for him. And of course, we can only snap. It’s cheesy and over-the-top and goes against everything Mr. Ellis has taught us about poetry—how it’s not this ridiculous stereotype of puppies and rainbows and rhymes about love—but here we are. I can’t help but love it.
“I see some of you remembered your coffee mugs. Awesome. If you didn’t, no big deal, I’ve got Styrofoam cups up here. Though, for the record, the environmental impact goes on your carbon footprint, not mine.
“I’ve got regular for me, decaf for you, and herbal tea with a hint of lemon for Ilca—”
“At least you do one thing right,” Ilca mutters in her raspy voice.
“And water for those of you without gum who are too self-conscious to suffer through the rest of your day with coffee breath. Ladies, come on up first.”
Now that science has become a daily masochistic torture session—waiting for Tabby to reach back or turn around, give me some sign that she hasn’t written me out of her new life—Mr. Ellis’s class has become a sanctuary, the one place during my school day where I can think and laugh and interact like a reasonably intelligent human being. Relatively speaking, given the balding black man in his turtleneck and the talking bookcase.
“Gentlemen, your turn. And while everyone’s getting settled, take your persona poems out and read them a few last times to yourself. I am pumped to hear these things.”
I head to the front of the room, where Mr. Ellis has the coffee station set up: two desks slid together against the side of his teacher’s desk along the front corner of the room, like he’s created a bar. He sits on a tall cushioned stool at the end of the bar, where each of us will sit to read our poems. He adjusts his ridiculous beret and strokes his beard, chatting easily with a few of the girls who sit up front. He looks like an idiot. I love how stupid he looks—that he relishes it, even. He’s all in.
I pour a cup of decaf into the oversize ceramic mug I brought from home—the one with “I ♥ Mom” and a faded pic of my smiling, semi-toothless, five-year-old face—and load it up with fake, delicious French vanilla creamer so that my mug looks more like tan milk than coffee.
“Wow, Matt, that might actually turn into cake,” Mr. Ellis says, watching as I drop my third scoop of sugar into my mug. Dad would be repulsed. Like Mr. Ellis, he drinks his coffee black.
“That’s kinda what I’m hoping for,” I say, smiling, then taking a sip. Perfect. It’s like liquid dessert. “It’s the only way this stuff is drinkable.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be a man one day.” He takes an exaggerated sip from his cup of regular black.
“Nice beret, by the way.”
“Thank you, Matthew. Ilca says I look like a member of the Black Panthers.” He leans forward and stage-whispers, “But she’s a little racist.”
I laugh and grab a cookie from the tray on Mr. Ellis’s desk and carry my mug back to my seat, clinking coffees with Trip before opening my writing folder.
This is the third Poetry Cafe we’ve done since we started after Thanksgiving, and I’ve liked it way more than I’m willing to admit. We began the first week with sensory poems, which kinda sucked, though Mr. Ellis seemed to like them. Trip and I both played it safe and went for basketball poems, his zooming in on the feeling of blowing by his defender to the basket, mine on standing at the foul line, late in the game, down by one, going through my foul-line routine—two hard dribbles, back spin, crouch, deep breath, look up, release.
Again, kind of lame, but a safe start. I can share a poem while still letting everyone know I’m a stud.
Which, yeah, I’m sure they all noted.
Stud-poet, bitches.
Last week, our second week, Mr. Ellis introduced us to this guy named Pablo Neruda, who wrote odes to things like artichokes, or tuna fish, or his socks. Really weird. I loved it.
So I wrote my “Ode to a Toilet Brush” and read it last Friday, which allowed me to recite “combing through the fecal smear” to a roomful of people. People actually groaned—Mr. Ellis nodded, grinning, exuding poetic pride.
This week, I’ve pulled out the big guns. Mr. Ellis started the week by sharing his all-time favorite poem, one called “Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too,” which is from the point of view of Peter Parker/Spider-Man, who, in the poem, is not only bored to death with being Spider-Man but also, inexplicably, has a speech impediment. Ellis read it perfectly, like Baby Bear from Sesame Street or a hyperactive Elmer Fudd. Our job, in turn, was to take on a persona of our own.
It’s been a particularly shitty couple of weeks. And on top of everything with Tabby, Murray has rekindled his obsession with Candy Land, which means I’ve been forced to play at least three rounds a night with him. Normally, Tabby would absorb some of the burden, and the three of us would play together. Obviously that hasn’t happened lately, so it’s been one-on-one Candy Land every night.
I hate Candy Land.
The little bastard’s a shark, too. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but I only ever win, at most, one out of the three rounds each night. I’ll be cruising along, double-oranging my way to King Kandy’s castle, when—BAM!—I pull Plumpy from the deck and get sent all the way back to the beginning, Murray squealing with delight, gleeful in my disgust.
The first time it happened, I made my little blue token-dude wave and talk to Mr. Mint on his second pass through the Candy Cane Forest.
Mr. Mint did not appreciate the traffic.
Murray loved the exchange.
So now I have to do it every time, Mr. Mint griping at each of our tokens as we pass, Murray giggling and egging him on.
On Monday, the night after hearing the Spider-Man poem and on my eight thousandth trip back to Plumpy’s stupid tree, inspiration struck.
I take a sip from my mug and pull the now-finished poem out of my writing folder. I scan the lines one last time and take a breath, trying to picture Murray sitting at one of the desks; it’s a hell of a lot easier to channel my inner-grumpy-old-man voice when he’s my only audience.
Trip’s leaning over, looking at the title, frowning. “ ‘Mr. Mint’?”
“Candy Land,” I say.
“Ahh. Nice.” He nods approvingly. “I went with Wolverine. Who secretly wants to be a woman.” He pauses, then says, “I may have to skip some parts.”
I laugh, and Mr. Ellis clears his throat at the front of the room to get things started.
As usual, he reads his own work first, his poem from the point of view of a cafeteria worker who spends his life rinsing off the lunch trays and utensils of obnoxious high school kids. We laugh and snap our fingers in response, Mr. Ellis smiling and waving us off.
“All right. All right. Thank you. Now who’s up first? Ilca baked an extra cookie for our first brave soul of the day.”
Hands go up around the room, and our Poetry Cafe begins in earnest. Just about everyone’s come up with something impressive. Maya Torres blows everyone away with a poem from the point of view of an ice cream truck driver—equal parts hilarious and deeply, deeply disturbing.
“Holy crap, Maya,” Mr. Ellis says when our semi-raucous snapping dies down. “I will never let my kids buy anything from an ice cream truck ever again. You’ve scarred us all.”
Maya beams. That is high praise in here.
We laugh and snap through the class period, pausing intermittently for coffee and cookie refills, until, somehow, our hour is nearly over, and I’m the only one left to share.
“All right, Matt, you’re up,” Mr. Ellis says, smiling and rubbing his hands together. “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
I take a deep breath and move to the front of the room. I settle onto the stool, careful not to look up at anyone, still trying to picture Murray, cross-legged on the floor in front of me. Everyone’s shared and everyone’s laughed, so most of the pressure is gone, but tiny beads of sweat pinprick my forehead and the buzz in my ears drowns out any noise in the classroom around me. I heard somewhere that, in a survey of what people fear most, dying comes in second. First is public speaking.
“Okay,” I start. “So I went with Mr. Mint, the candy cane lumberjack of Candy Land.”
I glance up and see a few smiles, a couple of nods, and I catch Mr. Ellis giving me a fist pump from the back of the room.
I take another deep breath, flip the switch on my cranky-old-man voice, and go for it:
Do any of you know
how long it takes to grow
a goddam candy cane?
much less a whole
freaking peppermint forest?
But they don’t care.
These punk kids come
trolloping by here every day—
the red one, the yellow one,
the green and the blue one—
like some dandy eighties pop group
skippin’ around stage
singin’ about girlfriends
and lollipops
and whatever other lame
crap these kids are into these days.
“Hi, Mr. Mint!
“How are you today?”
You just tramped
on twenty new candy cane sprouts,
you bright little turds.
How do you think I am?
I can hear everyone laughing as I read, which is good, because it goes on for another two pages as Mr. Mint voices his wildly inappropriate opinions on King Kandy, the princess, and most of all, Plumpy, whom Mr. Mint tells to choke on it.
People snap and smile when I’m done, but all I can hear for a moment is the blood pounding in my ears. My legs—I can’t even feel my legs when I slide off the stool, and I have to concentrate on moving them properly to make it back to my seat.
I hope I never have to do this for something important.
“Wow, Matt,” Mr. Ellis says, grin plastered to his face. “I’m torn between giving you a hug and sending you to guidance.”
Instead, he gives a double fist pound on the top of my desk as I take my seat and makes his way to the front of the room. Trip reaches over for a fist bump as we start packing up to leave for our next class.
“That was amazing, gang. Thank you. Next week, being the last before holiday break, we’re going to look at gifts of writing. So start thinking about whom you may want to write for—who in your life could use the gift of poetry,” Mr. Ellis says, grinning at us. “Have a great weekend. Take another cookie on your way out.”
My mind immediately jumps to Tabby, my shitty-romantic-movie instinct cranking up the ol’ film reel in my brain, confident it can fix all of this. It’s a romantic Christmas movie, no less, so the scene is double cheesy, with mistletoe appearing just as Tabby’s eyes read down my poem, a single tear pooling at the corner of her eye, threatening to spill over, her breath catching as she takes in my words, words that express gratitude for our irreplaceable friendship while revealing a desire for more. At which point, as I’m apologizing for not getting her a “real” gift, Tabby stops me midsentence, practically jumping into my arms, pressing her lips into mine so hard that that single tear on her cheek bleeds onto mine, and—
“Matt, you okay?” Mr. Ellis asks from the doorway. I’m still at my desk, hunched over, staring into my open book bag. I’m the only one left in the room, save Trip, who’s standing next to Mr. Ellis just inside the room, staring at me like I’m a complete moron.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, quickly zipping up my bag. “I was making sure I had my…yeah…”
Trip continues staring as I make my way up the aisle toward them.
“Awesome job today, guys,” Mr. Ellis says. “Who do you play tonight?”
“Eastern Adams,” Trip says.
“They any good?”
“No, they’re pretty bad. We should be okay.”
“Well, good luck, if I’m not there in time for the JV game.”
“No big deal,” Trip replies. “Nobody usually is.”
Mr. Ellis laughs. “Have a great game, guys.”
When we’re out in the hallway, Trip says, “Did you fall asleep in there or something?”
“No,” I say, forcing a laugh and feeling my face grow hot. “I was trying to figure out the opening lines of my gift poem for you.”
“Aww, that’s sweet of you, pal.”
“I couldn’t think of a word that rhymes with bulge.”
Trip laughs, and as we part ways to head for our respective lockers before geometry, Trip stops and turns back, grinning.
“Indulge.” He winks and turns back down the hallway toward his locker.
Thank God for Trip.