The Second Day of Class

The Second Day of Class

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.

--Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press, McDonnell Douglas Corporation (now Boeing), and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, Revival (Ireland), The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The Davidson Miscellany, Calliope Nerve, The Goddard Journal, The Pembroke Magazine, The Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine, The Road Apple Review and other publications.