Captive, by Jeffrey Zable

Captive, by Paul Klee (Switzerland). 1940.

 Captive

   He sits in the back of the class wishing he could be
anywhere but there. 
   His father beat him when he saw his report card, took
his bicycle away, and told him there’d be no more desert 
until he improved his grades.  
   He sits there watching the teacher diagramming sentences
but the only word he hears is the pronoun, “She” which makes
him direct his attention to Veronica Miller, the pretty blond
girl sitting in the front of the room, who he’s secretly been
in love with since kindergarten, who’s smart, funny, and
popular-- who hardly even knows he’s alive.
   He stares at her as she nods her head from time to time
at what the teacher is saying, and wishes he were the teacher
receiving her attention. He wonders what it must be like to be
that powerful.
    Finally the bell rings and he gathers his books and puts them
in his sack. He leaves the room with his head down and slowly
walks in the direction of his home, wishing he were a different
person, in a different time, and a different place.
     And he ‘d never come back. . .

Jeffrey Zable
​
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays Afro Cuban Folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies.   Recent writing in MockingHeart Review, Colloquial, Ordinary Madness, Third Wednesday, After The Pause, Fear of Monkeys, Brickplight, Tigershark, Corvus, and many others. In 2017 he was nominated for both The Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.