by Susana H. Case
I was nineteen in Ohio.
Mornings, the phone rang with my assignment.
I’d run down the hill to catch the bus—
a different school most mornings—
clutching a bag of M&M’s for lunch.
Principals said, just keep the students quiet.
Poor Maurice—same size as me,
but mentally a six-year-old—all deficits
and constant movement,
master of the intrusive touch.
Maurice pleaded, he had to use the bathroom.
I said no.
He peed all over himself.
The class finished the day pointing
and laughing. He sat there in the wet and cried.
I cried too. I went home, still crying.
Next morning, I ran back down the hill, headed
for another school, searching for the right bus.
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Susana H. Case has authored eight books of poetry, most recently The Damage Done, Broadstone Books, 2022. Dead Shark on the N Train, Broadstone Books, 2020 won a Pinnacle Book Award for Best Poetry Book, a NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite, and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. The first of her five chapbooks, The Scottish Café, Slapering Hol Press, was re-released in a dual-language English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka by Opole University Press. She co-edited, with Margo Taft Stever, the anthology I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe, Milk and Cake Press, 2022. Case worked several decades as a university professor and program coordinator in New York City and currently is a co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. http://www.susanahcase.com/.