The supposed apolitical nature of mathematics is an institutional frame that functions to sustain specific power structures within schools. This paper disrupts the common assumption that mathematics (as a body of knowledge constructed in situated historical moments) is free from entrenched ideological motives. Using narrative inquiry, the paper examines the ways in which novice mathematics teachers negotiate the intersection of curriculum and institutional politics. After outlining a theoretical framework, the paper performs a story entitled "political text" which reveals the plaintive, dissenting voice of a novice teacher as she negotiates the friction between her life history and the ossified canonicity of mathematics curriculum. Through the critical and reflexive voice of the novice teacher, the naturalized concepts of counting and measurement are playfully revisioned. The frequent silencing of such oppositional readings underscores the deeply embedded conflict between voice and text in the contemporary mathematics classroom.