by Stewart Alter
I know it’s ancient history
but I can’t seem to forget
my teacher’s unexpected oration
addressing my report on Egyptian
measurements in our sixth-grade class.
Before that, and even more so after,
my ruler was the cubit length,
its logic the body’s, not some notched wooden strip,
a tower stretching from the elbow to the tip
of the steepled middle finger.
I enlivened my report cover with color,
made rainbows of Pharaoh’s fingers and nemes,
added sphinxes, pyramids, a blue-striped Nile,
crowned the verbiage inside with visual style,
thus animating my words like hieroglyphs.
But when my teacher drew my opus from the pile
and held it, like Antony bearing Caesar’s will,
my classmates were mesmerized, my artistry reframed.
“This colored-in cover is baby work,” she proclaimed,
as she buried me along with that long ago world.
Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been contributing poems to Voices since 2021.