I watched while you towered over them
sneering evilly and then laughed it off over lunch.
I listened to you scream “you poisonous rats,”
loud enough to disrupt us next door.
I heard your Texas drawl whisper
“I wouldn’t piss on them if they were burning.”
I tasted the blood on my bitten back tongue
when you said a woman never could or should be president.
I felt you tense when kids wrote you notes
your slanderous apocrypha dispelled and cursed.
I knew your fear when you returned them to me typed,
inserted sic by errors with a note detailing my role—
their English teacher after all.

May your larynx be lobotomized
so you can say horrible things but never laugh.
May you have I heart Hilary tattooed on your chest
with the needle you drove a student to use.
May your hands get stuck in the holes your fists made
in the office wall above a child’s head,
May you remain there chained
so children can ask you the same questions again and again
until you answer calmly without disdain.
May a student be knighted for breaking your legs
and honey I shrink you to figurine size
May you in such a state be left in charge
of grown adults, no hope to scar.