You have beau­ti­ful hands
   the veins pro­trude on the top of them
     they are tanned

Please bring an­other tur­tle to us.
     You are a kind man

And when you write nice things
on my paper
     My heart aches. My eyes
          form tears

     I splash to the ground

Wayne Rob­bins

—AC Church

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Ed. Note

Once upon a time, AC Church had an Eng­lish class at a small-town North Car­olina com­mu­nity col­lege. Wayne Rob­bins was the teacher. I love to hear the sto­ries about this man, his class­room, and the hand­writ­ten com­ments he re­turned on every as­sign­ment. And how Wayne Rob­bins had tur­tle med­i­cine. He would res­cue them from the road and bring them to class.

AC Church is one of my most im­por­tant and badass teach­ers as a poet, writer, and per­son. In a yoga prac­tice, when­ever I hear the teach­ers thank their lin­eage of teach­ers, I al­ways think of how my lin­eage reaches back to Wayne Rob­bins. I won­der about who his teach­ers were. When we de­cided to in­clude this poem, AC got in touch with Wayne Rob­bins to ask him for per­mis­sion to use his won­der­ful name. He said it was ok, but then we had to email him again for more per­mis­sion to in­clude his email! You’ll see why. This is what he wrote:

---

From: Wayne Rob­bins

Sub­ject: hiya Wayne it's Amber

To: AC Church

Dear Amber,

Thanks for shar­ing these words with me—It re­ally means a lot.

I tried to be as ob­jec­tive as I can about a poem that has my name as its title.  I tried to pre­tend it was some­one else's name, like Je­remy Smith or Es­mer­alda Sanchez (I made those names up).

That helped.  I like the min­i­mal­is­tic ap­proach—no words are wasted and every line cre­ates a clear and in­ter­est­ing image in the mind.  And I like how it cap­tures the im­por­tance of a men­tor's im­pres­sion on a stu­dent.  And of course I like how the poem it­self has some­how made me write nice things about your paper again many years later.  That's pretty mag­i­cal—

I had for­got­ten about bring­ing that tur­tle to class.  I love tur­tles.

Thanks again for con­tact­ing me— Let's keep in touch!

Wayne

---

Ed. Note, cont’d:

The lat­est-but-surely-not-last in­stall­ment in the story of Wayne Rob­bins: When I left the front porches of North Car­olina to be a stu­dent of po­etry in Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia, AC Church made me a pair of mix­tapes for my drive across the coun­try. Some­where be­fore the Ten­nessee line, I heard Row­boat of Stone. Wayne Rob­bins & the Hell­say­ers make sweet music, which you can find in the usual lo­ca­tions, and Wayne Rob­bins is still a song­writer and poet who teaches in the Car­oli­nas.

—Rachel McLeod Kaminer, Guest Ed­i­tor