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.