Au courant and sleepless the night before class

Getting ready for bed, my husband tells me

a joke that I don't get.

To make matters worse,

I'm propped up on six pillows reading

the latest touted book of poems.

It won a prize in New York.

On the jacket the poet is an eminence,

bearded, gray, a this-is-serious

kind of guy.

I read these poems and I don't understand.

What's with the marble wall, and how

can it be "dark" and "sunbaked" both?

And why are lemurs suddenly swimming

down the third verse?

My forehead furrows and my lips

tense up. I crimp my glasses and

look again.

I don't want to be lost the night before class.

I feel completely dumb.

Maybe I'm not smart enough to be alive.

Is the true thing finally here,

my smarty ruse a bust at last?

I took Valerian an hour ago.

I'm not sleepy.

Did you get to the first poem yet? My husband calls

from the other room, where

the electric toothbrush whirrs.

I didn't understand it, I mumble from

my billowed perch, the poem my bean

a mattress down.

Good, he intones,

You're not supposed to "understand" a poem,

Remember?

But I'm the teacher, I say. I'm the teacher.