Prompts (for High School Teachers Who Write Poetry)

By Dante Di Stefano

Write about walking into the building

as a new teacher. Write yourself hopeful.

Write a row of empty desks. 

Write the face

of a student you’ve almost forgotten;

he’s worn a Derek Jeter jersey all year.

Do not conjecture about the adults

he goes home to, or the place he calls home.

Write about how he came to you for help

each October morning his sophomore year.

Write about teaching Othello to him;

write Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, 

rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven. 

Write about reading his obituary

five years after he graduated. 

Write a poem containing the words “common”“core,” 
“differentiate,” and “overdose.”

Write the names of the ones you will never

forget: “Jenna,” “Tiberious,” “Heaven,”

“Megan,” “Tanya,” “Kingsley,” 
“Ashley,” “David.”

Write Mari with “Nobody’s Baby” tattooed

in cursive on her neck, spitting sixteen bars

in the backrow, as little white Mike beatboxed

“Candy Shop” and the whole class exploded.

Write about Zuly and Nely, sisters

from Guatemala, upon whom a thousand

strange new English words rained down on like hail each period, and who wrote the story

of their long journey on la bestia

through Mexico, for you, in handwriting

made heavy by the aquís and ayers

ached in their knuckles, hidden by their smiles.

Write an ode to loose-leaf. 

Write elegies on the nub nose of a pink eraser.

Carve your devotion from a no. 2

pencil. 

Write the uncounted hours you spent

fretting about the ones who cursed you out

for keeping order, who slammed classroom doors, who screamed “you are not my father,” whose pain unraveled and broke you, whose pain you knew.

Write how all this added up to a life. 

Copyright © 2019 by Dante Di Stefano. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 4, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

(Special thanks to my sweet, loving husband, Tom Wolf, who sent this gem to me.)