Page 58 of Poet & Protector

I smiled up at him. “I know.”

Ten

The Mountain School

Two weeks later

MASON

The day of reckoning had finally arrived. Our collaborative poems were due, and we not only had to turn in the written assignment—the poem itself plus a process essay explaining how we created the poem—but we were also required to read our pieces in front of the class.

In the end, writing the poem with Nev had been fascinating. I learned so much about how his mind works and how he moves through the world. Our collaboration was challenging because poems are hard, and also because it’s difficult to focus on writing when all you want to do is make out with your hot boyfriend. Somehow, we managed.

The process essay was its own conundrum because we couldn’t exactly tell Ms. Castillo our process was fighting until we kissed and after that we got along well enough to finally work on the assignment; notwithstanding our frequent procrastination on the actual writing so there could be more kissing. The essay we turned in was a heavily redacted version of events and far less interesting than the real story.

Bryn finished reciting her and Fey’s poem and sat down after receiving a polite round of applause from the class. My packmates had taken their fight about the baseball glove in the trophy case and turned it into a comic poem titled ‘Smelly Leather For the Win.’ It was clever and very funny. I thought they’d probably get an A.

“Thank you, Bryn and Fey.” Ms. Castillo beamed at them. “That was delightful.”

Bryn preened and Fey looked smug. Before class they’d been pestering me constantly about Nev’s and my poem and whether we managed to finish the assignment. I chose not to answer their questions. I’d done a good job of convincing my pack the collaboration had been a struggle. That wasn’t completely dishonest. It had been annoying to work with Nev, then confusing, then complicated. Being around him was still complicated, but in a much better way.

“Mason and Nev,” Ms. Castillo called. “Who is presenting your poem today?”

I stood up. “We both are.”

Bryn gave me a surprised look and I winked at her. Fey scowled at me.

Nev rose from his desk and joined me at the front of the classroom.

He’d insisted I should be the one to introduce the poem before we presented it. I was reluctant to because it made me feel like I was taking too much credit when Nev was the real poet, but he argued that we’d made equal contribution to the poem’s creation, which was true, and that our classmates would expect me, as the outgoing one of our pair, to take charge.

“Because this was a collaborative assignment, Nev…ille—” I sucked at remembering I shouldn’t use his nickname at school, “—and I decided to write a call and response poem.”

I paused because most of the faces of my classmates had scrunched in confusion.

Nev stepped in, speaking quietly but confidently. “A call and response poem is meant to be performed. It requires two voices. Some parts of the poem are spoken solo while others are in unison.”

A few of the confused expressions cleared, but most remained, which made sense. Before Nev introduced call and response poems to me and shared some examples, I had no idea what they were. We hadn’t discussed the form in class. That was probably why Ms. Castillo’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.

“Well, this is wonderful,” she said to us. “I didn’t expect anyone to choose call and response for the assignment. What a treat. Please go ahead.”

The poem we turned in was written with spatial and visual indicators of how it should be read. The bold words were spoken in unison. The left and right columns were the call and response.

‘Solitary’ by Neville Durand and Mason Elliott

One mountain, two faces

east

west

Our vigil begins

watching

waiting

We run