Poem of the Week: Kathi Wolfe

 

Blind Ambition 

I'm in my seat,

averting my eyes,

those funhouse mirrors,

from the numbers

swimming across the blackboard.

Figures are slimy

monsters who slobber

all over your picnic

basket on the beach.

I grab my white cane

and run away from them.

"If you were Helen Keller,"

my teacher says,

"you'd get a gold

star in arithmetic."

Her voice sounds

like she's just

met Prince Charming.

"You would be a perfect

young lady," she says.

I don't want

to make friends

with fractions

or skip rope

with multiplication tables.

I want to chase

lightning bugs,

pull my brother's hair,

open up all the presents

before the company

comes on Christmas morning.

I don't want to be any

Goody-Two-Shoes Helen.

I want to baptize

my new sneakers

in the mud.

-Kathi Wolfe


From The Green Light (Finishing Line Press, 2013)

Used by permission.

Kathi Wolfe is a writer and poet. Her chapbook The Green Light was published by Finishing Line Press in Summer 2013. Wolfe is a contributor to the anthology Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, an American Library Association 2011 Notable book. Her chapbook Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems was published by Pudding House in 2008. Wolfe's poetry has appeared in Gargoyle, Beltway Poetry Review and other publications. In 2008, she was a Lambda Literary Foundation Fellow. Wolfe is a senior writer/columnist for the arts magazine Scene4 and a contributor to The Washington Blade.

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