New Semester

Four weeks in, I’m wondering if anything is starting to stick. Annotating the texts hasn’t quite led to dirty hands. Maybe tomorrow.

You can find the poem in Reconnaissance. Books are required for the course. Buy it.

Prototype

Bless the first day of class
in its confined clutter. Notebooks
stacked and piled like sculptures that
say to the first lesson, I am ready
for you to feed me. Catapult us
into the realms of academia.
I picture chimpanzees swallowing
pineapple white sheets in open cages.

Get your hands dirty, I tell them,
love the pages, the print, smell it
and remember papyrus. Break
the spine, hold it up to the light,
tell me who you are, author, tell
me your secrets, help me make sense
of your world. Transmogrify.
Cave dwellers, hierophants—make friends
with the exclamation point, bond
with the asterisk. Play with dirt.
Play with dirty words.