Elegy for a Crotchety English Teacher

Katherine Hoerth

December 1, 2022

I will lay a tank top on your grave

as though it were a big bouquet of flowers

so you can spend eternity at work

doing what you seemed to love—policing

the dress code violations of the school.

Oh, crusty English teacher, whom I miss,

I remember feeling powerful

strutting down those hallways past your classroom,

wondering if you’d catch me once again

wearing something inappropriate—

showing off a slip of naked shoulder

underneath those cold fluorescent lights. 

Cat and mouse, the game we played each morning—

a slip of flesh, your eyes like moons, a claw

extended as you busted me. My face

would turn as red as blood, and how

I’d have to wear an old shirt from the gym

to cover up my shame, the shame of Eve,

the shame you may had to wear yourself

so many years ago, a hoop skirt blowing

in the wind, exposing more than thighs. 

And did you feel vulnerable or strong,

or something in between? I wonder if

you hoped to cover up that vestigial 

of humiliation that you carried

in your heart, that rawest kind of shame

that you and I and even girls today,

who wear their corsets and their skin-tight leggings,

are taught to feel? That vulnerability?

I know you felt in your flesh as well,

that you too were a mouse within the eyes

of the hungry, caught within the talons

of the world, like I was, marching down

those hallways of the school. And now you’re gone.

I wonder what the undertaker dressed

your body in. I hope it’s something slutty

for your sake and for mine and for our daughters’ 

so we can finally bury bury bury

the shame we’re taught to feel in our flesh. 

Katherine Hoerth is author of five poetry collections, including Flare Stacks in Full Bloom (Texas Review Press, 2022). Her work has been published in Literary Imagination (Oxford University Press), Valparaiso Review, and Southwestern American Literature. She is an assistant professor at Lamar University and editor of Lamar University Literary Press.