Girl number twenty,
industrious and no longer
a victim of hard times,
is a model of progress--
fancy that! She fits
into a dimly lit classroom
of double her number,
rigid, little backs,
heads nodding forward
into square screens,
some blue, some green,
some multi-colored
with pictures, parts of a horse,
of a tree, of a human being.
The sea of their silhouettes
before me, I dream
behind my students
of red, brick schoolhouses
and of land beyond
untouched by technology,
not even a wheel,
where people can wander
with both body and mind,
but I know virtually
we need never wonder
anymore; our computers
can do that now.
They are our future resource--
we used to say that
about our children.
(This poem was inspired by the Charles Dickens classic Hard Times.)
Author Bio:
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in Spectrum, Dark Matter: A Journal of Speculative Writing, Spillway Magazine, The Broken Plate, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Pedestal Magazine, Science Poetry (a Canadian anthology edited by Neil McAlister), The Fine Line, Poydras Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Entelechy: Mind & Culture, Jelly Bucket, Concho River Review, The Blueline Anthology (Syracuse University Press), Midwest Quarterly, So to Speak, Red River Review, and other journals, with work forthcoming in the anthology 200 New Mexico Poems (scheduled for publication by University of New Mexico Press). Her poem, “Molts,” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and is co-founder of Native West Press--a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press.
industrious and no longer
a victim of hard times,
is a model of progress--
fancy that! She fits
into a dimly lit classroom
of double her number,
rigid, little backs,
heads nodding forward
into square screens,
some blue, some green,
some multi-colored
with pictures, parts of a horse,
of a tree, of a human being.
The sea of their silhouettes
before me, I dream
behind my students
of red, brick schoolhouses
and of land beyond
untouched by technology,
not even a wheel,
where people can wander
with both body and mind,
but I know virtually
we need never wonder
anymore; our computers
can do that now.
They are our future resource--
we used to say that
about our children.
(This poem was inspired by the Charles Dickens classic Hard Times.)
Author Bio:
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in Spectrum, Dark Matter: A Journal of Speculative Writing, Spillway Magazine, The Broken Plate, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Pedestal Magazine, Science Poetry (a Canadian anthology edited by Neil McAlister), The Fine Line, Poydras Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Entelechy: Mind & Culture, Jelly Bucket, Concho River Review, The Blueline Anthology (Syracuse University Press), Midwest Quarterly, So to Speak, Red River Review, and other journals, with work forthcoming in the anthology 200 New Mexico Poems (scheduled for publication by University of New Mexico Press). Her poem, “Molts,” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and is co-founder of Native West Press--a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press.
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