That started a long argument that veered rather significantly away from the poem.

“Apocalyptic times,” concluded Lorraine. She passed out a stack of new poems. Janine flipped through them quickly; not one of them was by a student in the class. “We’ll discuss these others tomorrow. Let us try to stay closer to the poem being discussed. If there is something you don’t know, look it up.” She scowled at the room, stuffed the poems back into her dingy tote bag, and disappeared through the door, ending class twenty minutes early.

I am signaling you through the flames, Janine thought, walking to lunch behind a group of her classmates. She’d waited, gathering and organizing her papers, until most people left, embarrassed by the way she’d monopolized class discussion. But what a perfect metaphor—that’s what it was, wasn’t it?—for the kind of work she had tried to do with her life, with her writing. Each poem a flag, not of surrender but of contact. Look, pay attention. That’s what she should have said, instead of mentioning the kid at the mall and Santa Claus—what was she thinking? She should have talked about the idea of the signal, the challenge posed by apocalyptic times and the radical idea that poetry could make a difference.

Though the media machine that thought it knew Janine’s mind imagined an apocalypse of city streets and technology run amok—gray, looming buildings, lurching robots, public transportation decorated with uninviting graffiti—the end times she imagined took place right near Panama City, in its flat expanses of strip malls and stoplights. In its tattoo parlors, check cashing places, signs for Lotto and for off-track betting. In its lurid billboards: for fast food and for megachurches, for motels and for pro-life counseling centers. In gas station crowds of dark-skinned men waiting to be carried off in trucks to work that lasted only a day. In windows rolled up and doors kept closed and locked, even in the daytime. In the listlessness of its teenagers and the accommodating gestures of their parents, who accompanied them—her own students told her—for the application of their first tattoo.

“Wait, sweetheart,” said Manfred. Janine turned around and saw that he was the last to leave their classroom. He did not seem to be in a hurry but walked with a deliberate and almost stately slowness, as if he expected her to wait as long as it took him to catch up. She had been slightly annoyed by the way he’d prompted her during class discussion, but she did not want to eat alone. Manfred seemed to study the uneven pea gravel path before each footfall. Janine noticed his yellow socks and wondered about his pen name.

“Thank you,” Manfred said when he finally caught up. “Good discussion.”

“I wish I hadn’t brought up that kid at the mall,” Janine said. “That wasn’t useful.”