Teacher-dreams resume as I plan to sub.

Schoolhouse Rock with veggies:

students staging Okra-homa,

biology with broccoli.

In the audience I rip

through a Playbill teacher’s text

to match dramatis personae with class-lists,

look for scenes and lessons to direct,

but the room’s too dark to read.

Action builds,

the song-and-dance an improv jumble,

while serious critics, real educators from the NEA,

tisk, frown, and shake their heads in front row desks

looking for me to stop the madness

as if I were in charge. Reviews appear

as cartoon thought-bubbles flown on wires:

This is not miosis and mitosis!

We will not countenance such tripe!

This travesty will close at lunchtime/intermission!

But the show goes on anon and on and on

as wave on wave of sparkling adolescents

shuffle across the well-waxed classroom floor.

Cardboard carrots and tomatoes dip and swing,

wide-open mouths sing through stagey smiles,

innocent, and pure, out of tune and out of time,

fresh new teeth resplendent in the footlights,

backed and framed by cheesy farm-scene

cut-outs drooping from the white-board chalk-tray.

At least this dream is not on Zoom.