Burgess Needle’s work has appeared in: Black Market Review, Connotation Press, Blackbox Manifold, Concho River Review, Raving Dove, Kritya (India), Minotaur and Nutshell Magazine. His poetry collections include: Every Crow In The Blue Sky (Diminuendo, 2009) and Thai Comic Books (Big Table Publishing, 2013). He taught English for two years in a small village in northeast Thailand and worked as a school librarian for thirty years in Tucson.---------
Lessons Beneath His House
Still in the moist heat
Surrounded by guava trees
He sometimes offered
English language lessons
For Thai students who arrived
Wearing white pith helmets
Ironed shirts and blue shorts
To see the foreigner write lessons
On a black board beneath his home
That calmly rested on concrete stilts
Creating perfect shade for a study
Of curious verb conjugations
So unlike Thai verbs that never changed
One word in a sentence announced
What is happening
Is about to happen
Has already happened
Clear improvement over the verb to be.
I am
You are
He is
Really
But that’s not the point beneath the house
Where a giant mottled tokay hangs
upside down catching flies
Where it’s fun to watch the American write
Watch him get thinner and thinner
on spicy food and Mekhong whiskey
Listen to his strange pronunciation
All beneath the house
Next to the guava trees
Still in the moist heat
Still in the moist heat
Surrounded by guava trees
He sometimes offered
English language lessons
For Thai students who arrived
Wearing white pith helmets
Ironed shirts and blue shorts
To see the foreigner write lessons
On a black board beneath his home
That calmly rested on concrete stilts
Creating perfect shade for a study
Of curious verb conjugations
So unlike Thai verbs that never changed
One word in a sentence announced
What is happening
Is about to happen
Has already happened
Clear improvement over the verb to be.
I am
You are
He is
Really
But that’s not the point beneath the house
Where a giant mottled tokay hangs
upside down catching flies
Where it’s fun to watch the American write
Watch him get thinner and thinner
on spicy food and Mekhong whiskey
Listen to his strange pronunciation
All beneath the house
Next to the guava trees
Still in the moist heat