Remembering Pandemic Teaching

Abstract

Remembering Pandemic Teaching Rachel Bates (bio) My students comment on the new bookshelfin my Zoom background.It lives below my framed diploma,a print of The Persistence of Memoryand a half-visible, beveled mirror. A peer told me I looked “put together”when Zooming, butno one can see the immediacyof the kitchen sink on my right,the bulging sectional to my left,hovering so near the frame, I must turnto pass between it and the desk I teach at.They cannot hear my failing marriage haunt the house. Even in this state, though,I keep up pretenses,keep the sink and couch at bay,turn my mind from my marriage.But these things press in, camera hungry.My darting eyes grow wearyfrom begging them for peace. How many others lived such weariness?All I saw were half-lives at the edges of screens:unfinished artwork, severed bookcases, cat tails,family members passing in and out like ghosts. [End Page 102] Rachel Bates Rachel Bates is an Appalachian poet and English doctoral student living and teaching in Knoxville, Tennessee. She studies Contemporary Appalachian literature against environmental and cultural frameworks, as well as considering Appalachian futures both academically and creatively. Her poetry has appeared in Gravel, West Texas Literary Review, and Broad River Review, and among other publications. Copyright © 2022 Berea College