September 2015
I live in Manhattan, where I taught high school for many years. My last book of poems was Where X Marks the Spot (Hanging Loose Press), and the new Tether magazine features my translation of Robert Desnos's first book of poems. I run a weekly poetry workshop at the Morningside Heights Library.
Morphology of Goodbye
This afternoon I wrote goodbye
on the blackboard. I wasn’t going anywhere.
In my self-appointed role
as History of the English Language
a pleasure like none I have experienced
flooded my whole body.
I laughed a bit maniacally
as I crossed out
the final e in “goodbye.”
“You see how a word changes, eh?”
I said to the children,
who quietly stared from their desks.
I held up the New York Times
and showed the headline that contained
a stark and black G-O-O-D-B-Y.
“The e in ‘goodbye’ is going,” I pointed out.
You see it spelled the old way less and less.
What once meant ‘God be with thee’
has lost some of its history
since I was your age in school.”
Unbelievably, the children
did not fall to the floor
dead in horrible positions.
This poem appeared in Where X Marks the Spot by Bill Zavatsky (Brooklyn: Hanging Loose Press).
This afternoon I wrote goodbye
on the blackboard. I wasn’t going anywhere.
In my self-appointed role
as History of the English Language
a pleasure like none I have experienced
flooded my whole body.
I laughed a bit maniacally
as I crossed out
the final e in “goodbye.”
“You see how a word changes, eh?”
I said to the children,
who quietly stared from their desks.
I held up the New York Times
and showed the headline that contained
a stark and black G-O-O-D-B-Y.
“The e in ‘goodbye’ is going,” I pointed out.
You see it spelled the old way less and less.
What once meant ‘God be with thee’
has lost some of its history
since I was your age in school.”
Unbelievably, the children
did not fall to the floor
dead in horrible positions.
This poem appeared in Where X Marks the Spot by Bill Zavatsky (Brooklyn: Hanging Loose Press).
©2015 Bill Zavatsky