Margo’s Revenge
Earlier this year, my EFL students had to read Paper Towns by John Green, and then choose a character from the novel, in order to write a poem as a response to the novel.
In order to get started, we decided that the entire class would first write a poem together, focusing on Margo, and this is what they ended up with in the end.
I decided on the catfish,
the lack of scales
coupled with shame,
three in the name of conflict and resolution,
long before
he slithered his way into her bed.
It only seemed fitting
to call down divine wrath
from behind bushes,
to break kashrut
and offer
fire in exchange for broken trust.
An eye for an eyebrow,
reciprocal justice,
vaseline and veet
to start this Exodus of mine.
Our ancestors
walked through scorching deserts
for forty years
to find peace.
A stolen night
spent at SeaWorld
pales in comparison to a lifetime of walking.
And yet,
snakebite or not,
I’d gladly return to Egypt once more,
locusts and all,
to watch the remnants of my paper town
dissolve into the morning sun,
to let his cheating Rhode Island
burn to the ground.