Looking, from a distance at palm trees
Have you noticed? How –
They look like spiders stuck on the pins
The type collectors use – ‘Minutens’ (I’m told).
In the wind the green palms writhe – silhouetted
For all the world like entomologist’ specimens.
Immobilized, pierced, stuck through
Have you noticed?
Once, I went into a classroom,
And sat to take the roll, but the chair broke
I was launched backwards,
Smashing my head against the brick wall – knocked-for-six!
The Year Sevens guffawed – and I saw the funny side
(Excepting the urge to vomit)
Nonetheless – prevailing through the seven-period day
Covering a colleague who was sick – mused
How often have we been injured?
We unsung cavalry – for the cavalry cannot fail!
Touching the giant lump upon the back of my head that night,
Unable to lie down – upright I sat, like the Irish dead, propped up for a Wake.
It made me laugh – laugh – laugh – had I been killed?
(Or knocked some sense into me?)
Merely a metaphor for our broken education system?
Me, like the thousand – thousand – thousand – workers
Worn, overworked, scrutinized, demeaned,
Hounded, tyrannized, emasculated – broken upon the rack!
Cracked upon this (Victorian) model of industrial requirements
An infected system never and no longer fit for use.
Since when did the human brain learn in sixty-minute segments?
Requiring teenagers to sit on plastic chairs, behind plastic desks?
Requiring teachers to flee from class to class – like yoked, panicked oxen.
The Office for the Standards in Education and their global like –
Where acronym, bureaucracy and malfeasance – The Minuten
Have crushed their shining best upon this rotted bench.
O Reader!
Look through the window of your classrooms
Specimen-teacher, specimen-student
Pinned down by mindless minuten
Framed in broken cabinets.
Katharine Summers © 2022 All Rights Reserved