CYRANO'S ALUMNI JOURNAL
It arrives each quarter with news of class years,
and I hold my breath, prayerful that no one I know
will be the Emeritus Professor of English
at East Schpatzier University
or just published her third book on
lesbian sublimation in the poems of Lydgate
(I remember that became her topic only because
Dickinson was spoken for).
If you haven't guessed, it's unbearable.
I have to crane my neck upward
at the guy I once thought was an asshole
or at the woman who'd ball any man
in the department, married or single.
Even my students from sections I led
are law firm senior partners,
gastroenterologists, or selling Hummers
on the Florida Gold Coast.
Enter the perpetual Little Voice of Shown-Up.
"They got the hotshit jobs, they got
the career, sucker, and what did you get?
What have you kept?"
I feel a bit like Cyrano sans
the bulbous dangling nose
before I can answer to myself
Mon panache I suppose.
KW/11-19-08
I think I'm starting to turn into Judith Viorst, and the worst part is I
don't give a damn.
--
Ken Wolman http://bestiaire.typepad.com http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
-------------------
"All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well."--Julian of Norwich
|