When Oscár disappears
from class two weeks after
the inauguration,
I ask his friend José,
Is Oscár coming back?
and his mouth falls into a flat line
before it turns into lips again
and he says,
naw, he go home,
and it takes me the whole class
period to realize José means
Oscar went home to Mexico,
and then my mouth falls
into that same flat line,
and I remember Oscár saying
at the beginning of the semester
that he was DACA, but his father
was muttering about leaving
even though Oscár said he wanted
to stay in Sacramento
until they throw us out,
and I said, That won’t happen,
and Oscár and José shook their heads
at the clueless white lady teacher,
and at the next class session Oscár
looks up from his phone and
says, They’re raiding on Fruitridge
right now, and he and José
look at each other, then at me,
and someone else in class asks,
Raiding what? and Oscár says,
ICE, rounding us up,
and that was the last day Oscár
sat in our bright, new classroom,
and now José’s lips
are clamped in that flat line—
he’s not giving any details—
so I tell José,
I’m so sorry,
before I can stop the words
that sound stupidly hollow
even to me, who means them,
and José says,
you didn’t vote for him
(never a name, just him)
and I say, no, I didn’t,
but I feel like I didn’t do enough
to try to prevent this—
I’m just a teacher,
just a poet,
and José surprises me,
says,
Let’s write a poem then,
which the whole class
decides to do, though
this is not a poetry course,
but we get out our
composition books, the ones
I gave them on the first day,
and our pens start to
scribble almost on their own,
and I write:
This is my poem for Oscár
who should still be in class,
who is so smart, who, no matter
where he is, I still consider
my student, the one who
taught me more
than I was able
to teach him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jan Haag is a Sacramento writer who teaches journalism and creative writing at Sacramento City College. She leads writing workshops in an old loft on weekends so she can get some of her own work done. She is the author of a poetry collection, “Companion Spirit,” and is working on a novel set in Sacramento in the 1950s and 1970s.