Witness Magazine

Night Class

By
Poetry•Vol. 33 No. 3

by Jane Zwart

At the far boundary
of your innocence
you will wake, aching
against a pair
of disappeared hips,
and you will realize
what you want.
Years later
the same dream—
but roused from it
by the rumpled man
beside you,
you will realize
what you have.

Tutored by dreams
you will drive the car
that refuses to brake
again and again
into the lake, slaking
the death drive.

You will have
and lose children.
You will speak
in tongues.

You will fall,
one collapsing floor
at a time, down
the Tower of Babel,
and climb
Jacob’s ladder,
sentinel angels
on every rung.

In night class,
you will read
the words off a page
and wake
with their taste
in your mouth,
not remembering
the verse.
How hard,
that morning,
to brush your teeth.

The lesson is loss

and the lesson
is unfathomable having.

 

 

 

Jane Zwart teaches English at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have previously appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, Rattle, Threepenny Review, and TriQuarterly.

Author Website:  janezwart.com
Twitter: @_janezwart_

 

Witness blends the features of a literary and an issue-oriented magazine to highlight the role of the modern writer as witness to his or her times. Launched in Detroit in 1987, the magazine is best known for showcasing work that defines its historical moment; special issues have focused on political oppression, religion, the natural world, crime, aging, civil rights, love, ethnic America, and exile. The issues “New Nature Writing,” “The Sixties,” “Sports in America,” and “The Best of Witness, 1987 – 2004” eventually appeared as university press anthologies. In 2007, Witness moved to Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The magazine publishes one print issue and one online issue a year, and increasingly seeks out work that contextualizes the American experience by highlighting issues of global concern.