Wednesday, August 8, 2012

David Wendt

by Paul Lewellan


“How was your week?” I asked. The others in the circle looked over to David. Unlike them, he was still employed. His coworkers didn’t know his diagnosis; they only suspected. Or they dismissed the idea because he was too young to have Old Timer’s disease.
“Last Friday there was this student . . .,” David began. He looked at the notebook in front of him, turned to the page from Friday. He stopped.
“What about him?” I prompted.
“Her.” David shifted in his chair. He was wearing the sport coat and dress slacks he’d worn to school that morning, but had taken off the tie and traded his loafers for Nikes. “You’ll really think I’m losing it . . ..”
“No one is here to judge you.” I waited. “You were telling us about a student.”
“Of course.” He glanced down at his notes and started again. “I was at my desk at the back of my classroom.” He gestured as if to show us the location. “I looked up and saw a young girl seated across from me. She wore a white and black cheerleader’s uniform with a large G on the front of the sweater. That told me I was at Goldwater High School.”
“As opposed to . . . ?”
“Sometimes I get confused and think I’m back teaching at St. Stephens College. Anyway, I knew where I was. I looked around. On the wall were my posters of Boll, Gordimer, Solzhenitsyn, Solinka . . ..” I noted that David could recall the Nobel Prize winners for literature, but not the school where he taught. “I got flummoxed. I didn’t know who she was.”
“What did you do?” asked someone anxiously from the circle.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Boy

by Adukuri Jagannath Rao


We came away as we found boy missing
From a motor cycle on a hill road racing
With a train ,chug- chugging to his song.

A saffron shirt was all we know of the boy
Who brought his eyes down for love in snows
Setting hearts aflutter in many a blouse.

(On the passing of Rajesh Khanna, yesteryear's superstar today)