The Story



Wind lifts a poppadum from my plate
and shatters it on the path.
The principal gauges me through glass.

The Korean student runs, a jog on the spot,
the Japanese jumps, a trampoline,
grins with all of a comic’s hardiness.

They have been awaiting my story all week.

Into the classroom block they file,
uniform draining their pigment, white silver
wheatgrass lifted by strands of string
from the tops of their heads.

‘This is a secret,’ I begin. ‘It could lose me my job.’