315/365 Joan

We noticed your chin, a point
on a heart-shaped face full of
freckles somewhere hidden
as were your
eye smiles
that
might indicate
connection to the boy
friend you cultivated and
fed -- or did he feed you? Didn't
matter in the clapboard house
full of English majors & lovers.

314/365 Hilda

First Wisconsinite
hair coarse as cornmeal, a fluffy corona to frame
dough-soft cheeks, squeak-squint smiles, eyes

tiny as buds
you roomed with a broad-faced Midwesterner and her
full-bodied almost-lover, sharing heat bills, treading

carefully
across tenant-scratched wood floors on
second story, your story never quite or fully understood

313/365 Sr. Chrysostom

Hall monitor
tall as a hall tree
narrow as a hall tree
white-haired
wide-browed, long
distance, inches
between
nose tip and
lip top
often pursed
but not in
anger or
disapproval:
maybe just
slight displeasure
at living with
teenagers
listening
to commonplace
music, laughter,
TV shows:
dorm
nun.

312/365 Mr. V

Science is curious
Experimentation, you
Thought, taught, tried:
Unaware that junior-high
Students would
Undermine your shaggy-eyebrowed
Pedagogy by
Finding alternatives
Or paying attention to
Ridiculous data, like
Falling leaves, gravity,
And rock-and-roll
Influences on
Lizards. Now I
Understand your attempts to
Revise the unexamined
Ennui we were used to.

311/365 Julie T

Lucky sixth-grader, handing out
lunchtime milk to us
little
kids

At age seven, I wanted similar glory
probably because we shared a name
you had power

we were neighbors
you were kind (extra cookie sometimes
or
no tattling when I pitched my
half-full carton of plastic-y milk
while you watched)

310/365 Kay V

Late-night yard games
Spud Kick-the-Can Spotlight
neighborhood kids ran green through
summers, humid and dewy, in
your backyard but never
house, where at least
a brother and mother lived,
mystery to us Catholic kids with families
like small sports teams, sprouting at
puberty into our own privacy