She led them to the lawn shaded by twisted old oaks. No one, not even the immaculately attired Lilian, dragged along a chair. No one spoke. Along the roadway, crape myrtles dropped the last of their bright pink blossoms, and through their pale, dry branches you could see the protesters sitting in the merciless sun.

“See them?” Lorraine said, not even bothering to lower her voice. She crouched, her long skirt dragging the mulch beneath the crape myrtles. Her students crept next to her and kneeled or crouched as they were best able. If the protesters took notice of them, they did not let on. “Here they are in the blazing heat, holding up their signs not because camera crews are here, not because they think we’ll come out and pay attention to them, but because something compels them to do it. Maybe the news cameras will be back tomorrow, maybe not. Maybe someone will listen to them, take some of their literature, or maybe they will be completely misunderstood. No one is going to give them money, they can be sure of that.” She stood, with effort. “That’s poetry.”

Then she turned around and went back inside, not looking behind to see whether they would follow. Janine was right behind her. The mildly air-conditioned room felt much cooler after the outside heat, and Lorraine was already announcing the order in which they’d be work-shopped as the last of them filed in. First she wanted them to make some revisions on the poems she’d selected to talk about, and she walked around the room, dropping heavily marked papers at each of their places, like an annoyed waiter delivering bread or sodas to impatient diners.

“She learned our names,” Manfred whispered, as a paper fluttered to his hands. He sounded pleased, though his poem was marked through with lines, crosses, and angry-looking arrows.

Janine gasped as her own poem came to rest in front of her. “Last Day,” it was called, and every line was struck through with blue felt tip—except for two, in the center, which now looked both lonely and burdened, like the survivors of a disaster. It was a poem she’d spent weeks on.

“Leave your revisions in my office by the morning, and I’ll get them to you at workshop. We’ll do exercises tomorrow, and we’ll be workshopping the first of you by Wednesday. You have today to work,” she announced. “That will give you a good reason to skip the seminars they have planned.”

She nodded at them and left, in her usually hurried and fumbling way, like she was afraid some of them might chase after her.

“She left me five lines,” said Manfred, after some of the others had left. “That’s an improvement for me, though I won’t say they are my favorite lines.”