getting caught, getting taught

Lina Krishnan

 

Been through high school and college

But I couldn’t read or write

Going to school was going to war

 

Being a teacher seemed a good place to hide

17 years telling my students: be seekers of truth

But I was the biggest liar in the room

Crossed the line, I wasn’t just cheating

Was a criminal

 

Looking back it was crazy

Never written a sentence

Didn’t ask for help, never told anybody

48 years in the dark

 

Then…“Cathy, I can’t read”

She thought I didn’t read much

Love is blind and deaf

Gave up on myself, went on “teaching”

 

Then our three-year-old said

“You’re not reading it like mama

Finally got the monkey off my back

And learned to write

 

First thing I wrote, was a poem

Thing about poetry, you don’t have to know

A complete sentence, or write it

 

This poem was written using only the words that appeared in a newspaper article, turning the journalistic piece about a neo-literate into verse.

[My article source was from the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43700153]