<\/p>\n
Our Miss Brooks goes home at night,
\nWhere the rooms are empty,
\nThe chairs are silent,
\nThere never were any of her own children, and the
\nWork is never done.<\/p>\n
Papers to grade of course and
\nDinner to drink. A page of curricular notes for
\nAdmin, required and universally ignored.<\/p>\n
This scribbles out on auto-pilot while she
\nSmashes her mind into silence with
\nImbecilic info-tain-news-ish-ment for those
\nPrecious hours before sleep.<\/p>\n
For how could she sleep if her mind wasn\u2019t
\nNumb? What with the national, state, county,
\nDistrict, city, and neighborhood up in arms
\nDictating and decimating her job
\nDaily it\u2019s a wonder she doesn\u2019t go in
\nGibbering with her bra on backwards and
\nMismatched shoes.<\/p>\n
Our Miss Brooks fights for better pay: something
\nCommensurate with two degrees, a position of public trust,
\nOngoing certification requirements, decades of experience, and
\nDozens of fragile lives under her thumb.<\/p>\n
At least enough to keep her shit together.<\/p>\n
Every time she says so in the lounge,
\nsomebody snorts, \u201cYou wish\u201d and stalks out.<\/p>\n
She fights. Fights the adults for the kids;
\nFights the kids for themselves. They really do need a few skills,
\nLike it or not.<\/p>\n
At home alone, she
\nFights herself roiling through
\nIncomplete housework, distant family, waiting until payday for
\nGroceries, media vitriol blasting, eight more hours of
\nUnpaid overtime this week (Idealism went and
\nVolunteered for the damn committee), and a lurking
\nMigraine probably triggered by the total weight of her
\nSocial fabric.<\/p>\n
Our Miss Brooks goes home at night, but
\nShe doesn\u2019t get her rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our Miss Brooks goes home at night, Where the rooms are empty, The chairs are silent, There never were any of her own children, and the Work is never done. Papers to grade of course and Dinner to drink. A page of curricular notes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":967,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,441],"tags":[2228,2133,2316,2318,2634,15,391,10,355,2116,2635,401,2317,390,1084],"class_list":["post-40286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses","tag-2017poetrymarathon","tag-2017-poetry-marathon","tag-laurel","tag-laurel-wilson","tag-our-miss-brooks","tag-poem","tag-poet","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-marathon","tag-poetrymarathon2017","tag-teacher","tag-teaching","tag-wilson","tag-writer","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/967"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40338,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40286\/revisions\/40338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}