“The Talking Chalk“
by Isabella Escalante
“Druble drow old rows,”
she drones, pointing her mono-nose
towards the blackboard
She picks up chalk,
and skrit-skrat-scratches across
so hard and so fast that the chalk screams,
“bloody murder!”
He prays to his chalk lord,
holy god of chalk, wailing
“Oh, god, please,
just let me the fuck out!
I have dreams of scribbles, trouble, and fresh pavement
that I need to live!”
It’s all in vain, though
He squeaks to the numb and the glazed,
the dumb and the blazed,
who watch him
get shaved down
to lesser versions of himself
Soon the chalk will lose his spunk,
and very soon after that,
he will be gone—
Reduced to insentient chalk dust
settled around the place he hated most
***
Isabella Escalante is a junior at the University of California Santa Cruz.
