HISTORY LESSON

 

​​​​

​​​​

It’s like social dyslexia—
I lift my two hands to show you.

​

Vulcan, I say, smiling,
enjoying the fact that I can do something
I think you cannot do,
and I tell you how I used to do this in school

asking others if they could split their four fingers

into Vs on each hand.

 

I show you again.

Smiling.

 

I was Spock, I would tell them.
I am Spock, I tell you
aware of my sincerity,
the universe flipped about in my head. It’s not

logical—neurodivergence. Not

to me, anyway, still trying to figure me out. Spock

I say again like I used to say it to all the kids
in school, with confidence

​

—one social someone

in history
that I can understand.

​​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​

​​​​​

​​​​​

​​​​​​​​

​​​

BIO:

​

​Kimberly Ann Priest is the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press for her book Wolves in Shells, as well as the author of tether & lung (Texas Review Press) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications). An assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University, her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Salamander, and Beloit Poetry Journal.

​

 

​

​