Fez Avery

The Teachers Say This Isn't the Apocalypse

We all watch the sky curdle
through the classroom window.
I pretend the hills huddle in clumps
like parents, playing cards and puffing
black clouds up to the rafters.
The clouds are just misbehaving. They pool
around the hills then cool and flood
the football field. They can’t be categorized.
I used to beg for recess inside—
organizing the teacher’s pretty plastic bins.
Their soft colors for each reading level:
blue, purple, yellow, pink. I want to run
now through the field grass until I fall
into the frog pond. Cut up my legs or bruise
into something like the last-night sky.
Instead, we share the stories we wrote
in free time. Andrew says, we’re going
to war with China. Iris says,
well what does Andrew know.
I tell my story about my dad dying
in a motorcycle accident when I was a baby.
I find a window cracked in the boy’s bathroom.
I balance my feet on top of the sink and grip
the ledge, pull my face over to it. The breeze
is so warm. Eyes closed, it’s sweet
until I hear the door swing. My dad
didn’t really die, it just sounded cooler that way.
Later, I find the window shut tight and sealed
with heavy yellow tape. No one wants
to admit what this is all really for.
When you ask, the teachers gum up
like bugs. I look out at the field
grass, tall and sharp at the tips.

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Fez Avery is a poet and performer from Michigan. His work can be found in The Journal, Gulf Coast, Passages North, swamp pink and elsewhere. He is a poetry instructor at Interlochen Center for the Arts, holds an MFA from Virginia Tech, and is currently a PhD student at Western Michigan University. His debut poetry collection, CLAYBOY, is forthcoming from Write Bloody Publishing in May 2026. Find him online at fezavery.com.