Dig In, Pinch, and Pray

When I think of him now, I remember his wild hair, 
the way his thin frame towered over each of us
in that sixth-grade class, his baritone voice

often filling all corners of the room, jolting
anyone unlucky enough to have dozed off. His white mustache 
stained, curving across that smirk. 

Mr. George, former Army medic, would mark a slanted F 
on a perfect quiz just to hear us gasp before 
slashing the pen to ink a jagged A. 

The final year at Amelia Earhart Intermediate, and we were all
on the precipice. By then, my cat Elmer had been dead 
for months, and I scrawled the date everywhere, hoping

one day someone would build a machine so I could go back—
February 2nd, 1996—and pull him out in time
from underneath my mother’s car. What had we done

to prompt Mr. George to share the tale of his trip to India,
the tour guide who encouraged him to drink
fresh elephant piss? We shrieked, 

laughing—When’ll I ever have that chance again?
He coughed, feigned retching. Another day, he asked
What’s the last thing that goes through a fly’s head

when it hits the windshield? Pause, grin. His butthole.  
Later, a flipped switch, the overhead projector 
whirring to life, and Mr. George taught us  

about urethras, vulvas and fallopian tubes, scrotums,
placentas and the glans penis, so many alien 
stressed and unstressed syllables, consonants we tested,

whispering, looking and trying not to look at each other in wonder 
and horror and of course we laughed
when Patrick asked What if you pee instead of ejaculate 

which oh my god why would you say such a thing, 
but how we listened as Mr. George, without smiling
or winking, answered. Deep down, 

we too knew that despite our posturing 
we didn’t know anything at all. 
I didn’t see Elmer the morning he died. 

I was in the house when it happened. I was probably playing 
Chrono Trigger before my bike ride to school, a game 
where a boy and his friends travel to save a world

from the star-born monster that had burrowed 
into its prehistoric heart, sleeping there, 
dreaming, feeding and growing, until, 

on another distant, sunny morning, 
it emerged, all blades and sharp points, 
to bring about the apocalypse. 

Keys in the door, and my mother returned, whimpering 
Our baby’s gone, and my sister’s shirt, bloody, and everyone 
crying so I fled to my room. 

One time Mr. George, wild-haired and tall, paused and stared 
as if tracking some distant movement, then sighed, and on his breath 
the scent of cigarettes he’d smoked 

while we ran at recess. When I think of him now, 
I think of flooded fields, horizon of dense mangrove, 
line of troops scrambling to find cover, and within 

showers of fired rounds, the panicked yelling, screaming, crying…
Mr. George asking us softly in that baritone voice 
Want to know how to deal with a severed artery?

ZACH JEPSEN

Originally from North Carolina, Zach Jepsen currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, with his family. He earned his Master’s degree in poetry through Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers and is a member of the Charlotte Lit community. He is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.