» Poetry

Miss Lorenz

Clint Margrave

 

should’ve been sipping wine in a Paris café,

but instead she drank Folgers

 

and taught passé composé

to a bunch of acne-faced inmates

 

in the asylum known as Canyon High School.

I’m not sure how she imagined her life

 

when she took that degree

in a Romance language,

 

but it had to have more romance

than kicking Carl Mulligan out

 

of class for wearing a Cramps t-shirt

that said, “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?”

 

It had to be more French than busting

15-year-old metalheads hotboxing

 

Camels by the chain link fence

behind her classroom wall.

 

But everyone has bills to pay.

Everyone has a bouche to feed,

 

even if it’s only your own.

Miss Lorenz must be retired now.

 

I like to imagine her living

out these late years eating mussels

 

under a red awning in Montparnasse

or sampling Beaujolais Nouveau

 

at a little round table by the Seine

or maybe just taking in the view

 

from her own backyard

of all that’s in the distance.

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Clint Margrave

Clint Margrave is the author of several books of fiction and poetry, including the poetry collections Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and Visitor, all from NYQ Books. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, The Sun, Rattle, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. He is currently a 2024-2025 U.S. Fulbright Scholar living in Sofia, Bulgaria and teaching creative writing at Sofia University. When not abroad, he lives in Los Angeles, CA.