Sebastian H. Paramo
BEGINNER’S ENGLISH FOR REFUGEES
I walk around the makeshift classroom where the heat has us sweating for words. The adults repeat phrases like a chorus, Each word is said as if it could change their lives. They get out their notebooks & sharpened pencils while the fan overhead twirls a phrase or two that says, show me the way. Multicolored hands capture each letter in perfect script like a child hunger. They nibble at all the words. Their eyes are on me—they don't stare, they're intent at becoming American like me. I string out a couple more words & hammer phrases into their brains. I want to give them that hammer, holding a marker in my hand, I want to test the refugees. I call on a Nepalese woman to answer what is this? But she doesn’t understand this—that word this. Not yet. She turns to her neighbor from Iraq saying No idea. Repeating her phrase. No Idea. I turn myself around; writing the word again—they repeat.
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Sebastian H. Paramo’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The North American Review, The McNeese Review, Canary, Lunch Ticket, The Oklahoma Review, and others. He is an editor for the online journal, The Boiler, and was recently awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. He lives in Dallas.
Katharine Johnsen studies and teaches at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she is the recipient of the Bernice Kert Fellowship. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Birmingham Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She was recently awarded a scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and earned her BA from Emory University.
In addition to Mixed Diction (Mammoth books, 2009), Jeff Schiff is the author of Anywhere in this Country (Mammoth Press), The Homily of Infinitude (Pennsylvania Review Press), The Rats of Patzcuaro (Poetry Link), Resources for Writing About Literature (HarperCollins), and Burro Heart (Mammoth books). His work has appeared internationally in more than eighty periodicals, including The Alembic, Grand Street, The Ohio Review, Poet & Critic, The Louisville Review, Tendril, Pembroke Magazine, Carolina Review, Chicago Review, Hawaii Review, Southern Humanities Review, River City, Indiana Review, Willow Springs, and The Southwest Review. He has been a member of the English faculty at Columbia College Chicago since 1987.
Philip Kobylarz is a teacher and writer of fiction, poetry, book reviews, and essays. He has worked as a journalist and film critic for newspapers in Memphis, TN. His work appears in such publications as Paris Review, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series. The author of a book of poems concerning life in the south of France, he has a collection of short fiction and a book-length essay forthcoming.