Diane Payne
Diane Payne’s most recent publications include: Obra/Artiface, Reservoir, Spry Literary Review, Watershed Review, Tishman Review, Whiskey Island, Kudzu House Quarterly, Superstition Review, Blue Lyra Press, Fourth River, Cheat River Review,The Offing, Elke: A little Journal, Souvenir Literary Journal, Resevoir, and Outpost 19. Diane is the author of Burning Tulips (Red Hen Press) and co-author of Delphi Series 5 chapbook.
1973
Enraged, my eighth grade Civics teacher picked up the chalkboard eraser and tossed it all the way across the room, and that sucker soared while classmates ducked their heads, and I sat in the back row too shocked to move, until the eraser smacked my face, and the students didn’t dare laugh, and the teacher just turned around and told us to get out of there, and for once, I wondered if I could have been wrong, and he was right, and my emotional plea to save the unborn babies was nonsense, and he was correct that women had the right to make that decision, and I walked home from school embarrassed and ashamed, knowing that his anger came from somewhere other than my nonstop emotional pleas for the unborn babies, because I knew there were bigger things happening in the world, and I was stealing booze one day, going to revival sessions the next, and oblivious to the fact my only visit to a dentist left me with a perfectly fine tooth filled as if there was a cavity, and I refused to see a dentist again until I was an adult, right about the same time I had to walk past a large group of protesters before entering the Planned Parenthood office, when I once again remembered that eraser, that dentist, that Pentecostal church, and dreaded leaving the Planned Parenthood Office and walking past the crowd once more.