The students think I’m lying 

about a Dallas horizon.

No mountains?

We Google “I-35”

and they are repulsed.

No curve?

In a school in a pit

in a town in a valley

I can’t blame them.

We are nothing if not nestled.

Is it like Mad Max?

I laugh and mime 

the spray-paint-mouth boys

but silently recall 8 p.m. sun,

road rage out a window, barreling 

toward a line flatter than an Ellsworth Kelly,

blue and green cutting each other off.

The opposite of coziness is

a standing invitation to sprawl.

Teacher, another picture?

I click on the dried-up Trinity River

and their heads tilt again. I tilt mine too

and think of absorption

and expansion, of horizontal defiance,

all the swimming pools and football fields

and drive-thrus and 8-lane intersections.

How about it?

 
Jenna Jaco is a 2015-2016 ETA at Changpyeong High School in Damyang, Jeollanam-do.