Rejected by Nimrod - what a passel of nimrods!
one rejection means send out two more submissions
my poetry mathematics.

One of my favorite students at the far south school has been ejected for lack of performance.
How much of this is racism? How much of this is his fault? How many kids wander away down the road into oblivion, their absense unrepented? Unatoned for? This is a bright kid,
hear the echoes, a bright kid, a promising kid, a mind a heart a spirit meant to fight for.
We should all be fighting to keep these kids' heads above water.
We should be asking questions like why do tribal kids duck heads and drift out of high school before graduating? It is not enough to send them off to the "alternative high school" which I know as a circle of overweight native kids smoking cigarettes by the streetlight in the gravelly area between the community center and maq laq's center. They look depressed and sidelined. They don't look well served or happy or functional or loved. Most of all they look dejected and unloved and like they know they are beside the point. How do you keep on when you are seventeen years old and others have concluded you are beside the point? Wouldn't you feel like the used snow shovelled to the side of the roadway? Wouldn't you feel like playing video games all night is about all you're good for? If you write a story where a teacher kicks you out of class for speaking in your native language that nobody on the planet is fluent in anymore and your teacher calls it racist where do you go? If you are a kid of color and you write about race, are you a racist if your white teacher thinks so? Are you just being provocative? Are you trying to understand something? Are you trying to find a place in the world for you with your heritage and your love of the land and hunger for connection with thirteen thousand years of family in one place and a twenty first century fractured life? Now that your grandfather is dead, is it your job to embrace and extend his connection to your ancestors or what is your job? Who has use for you? Who are you connected to now?