The Writing Teacher

By Willy Conley

This William Carlos Williams poetic
His pupil randomly points at with finger 
As he fanned pages of The Desert Music.

She picks up her pen, eyeing this relic,
Copped: “All mankind grew to be his debtors…,”
This William Carlos Williams poetic.

He thinks Fagin, teacher of pickpockets, 
Who trained orphans to steal treasures galore
As he fanned pages of The Desert Music.

Why misers crave loot was a trait archaic
As time of beasts stealing food of others.
This William Carlos Williams poetic

Of street urchins clawing through life’s epic.
His student with pen frozen on paper,
As he fanned pages of The Desert Music

For next learner’s jab on a dry lyric;
To tap her mind for words to outpour,
This William Carlos Williams poetic
As he fanned pages of The Desert Music.

Willy Conley’s most recent book is Photographic Memories – Essays, Playlets, and Stories. His other books are: Plays of Our Own – An Anthology of Scripts by Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Writers, Visual-Gestural Communication: A Workbook in Nonverbal Expression and Reception, The World of White Water – Poems, Listening Through the Bone – Collected Poems, The Deaf Heart – A Novel, Vignettes of the Deaf Character and Other Plays, and Broken Spokes – A Play in Seven Scenes. Born profoundly deaf, Conley is a retired professor and chairperson of Theatre Arts at Gallaudet University (the world’s only liberal arts university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students) in Washington, D.C. For more info about his work, please visit: www.willyconley.com