From conversations in public school classrooms and faculty meetings, to arguments in restaurants and folding tents,
said the Frog to the scorpion
blurs the lines between pedagogy and prejudice, romance and anti-racism. In poems referencing a ubiquitous "She," Matthew E Henry's latest collection explores the options left a Black teacher in a white system when love is met with empty promises and toxic amnesia. Henry's frog survives the initial encounter and slowly, painfully, "his slick, perforated back" begins to understand: a scorpion will always be exactly who She is-someone who can't tell Asians students apart, who equates accountability with gaslighting, who thinks Goldilocks was the hero of the story, who makes wishes on the rubbed heads of magic negroes She's dated.
attempts to decode Her mind, and the fallout of the relationship, while asking what's the difference between a breakup and resignation letter.