Poetry Bulawayo

This sylph came forward from the second row the second day of class and asked if I would edit her poem so it would read the way it should. I told her straightaway that even though this was writing class and I was the instructor, I couldn’t edit her poem and still have the poem be hers. Editing her poem, I said, would be a little like rape, just painful in a different way whether she understood that yet or not.