Poem – AWAKENED (By John Stanizzi)

AWAKENED

            November 22, 1963

            East Hartford High School

            2.02 p.m.

Ninth grade English, and just out of Catholic,

school, I was not yet adjusted to the

outrageous idea of a public school –

no uniforms, and teachers who were men,

men in street clothes, not dressed in black with stiff

white collars and faces of gravity,

and women teachers with hair on their heads

that we could see, and dresses like our moms,

and liberty to fall asleep in class.

I was sleeping when I heard the static

of the PA thirteen minutes before

the end of school.  The speaker squawked a cough,

and then Mrs. Wilson tried to say through

tears that President Kennedy was dead.