The teacher asks a question. You know the answer, you suspect you are the only one in the classroom who knows the answer, because the person in question is yourself, and on that you are the greatest living authority, but you don’t raise your hand. You raise the top of your desk and take out an apple. You look out the window. You don’t raise your hand and there is some essential beauty in your fingers, which aren’t even drumming, but lie flat and peaceful. The teacher repeats the question. Outside the window, on an overhanging branch, a robin is ruffling its feathers and spring is in the air.
—Mary Ruefle
Rights & Access
From Cold Pluto, 1996, 2001
Carnegie Mellon University Press
Copyright 1996, 2001 Mary Ruefle.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press. Copyright 1996, 2001 by Mary Ruefle. For further permissions information, contact Carnegie Mellon University Press, 5032 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15289-1021, www.cmu.edu/universitypress.
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Mary Ruefle
Mary Ruefle (1952- ) is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013).