Poem of the Week, by Marianne Kunkel

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Homeschooled

- Marianne Kunkel

The Nazis? Learned of them in comic books.

Titanic? Heard of it when I mistook

the film for a rom-com on a cruise ship—

glued to my friend’s TV as she skinny-dipped

with a lawn boy, I wondered what the hell

else my parents wouldn’t tell. Six-by-eight cells,

she later said, scrunching her dripping hair,

inside a jail called Gitmo. Then upstairs

in her dad’s office, she skimmed her fingernail

across a world map: Hiroshima, Trail

of Tears, Darfur. No password locking it,

a laptop on the desk showed us portraits

of Katrina—backpacked men wading in streets,

told too late of disaster. Dead last, like me.

–

For more information on Marianne Kunkel, please click here: http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/?q=blog/around-office-marianne-kunkel

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