96.0

Every evening, for the past couple of weeks/a month,
a some point,
I've needed to jump in a tub of scalding bubbles
to soak. I'm freezing.

In 14 minutes, I'm fine. I try to resume my evening,
but usually I'm exhausted/sleepy.

Last night, I >bing< decided to take my temperature:

96.0 Fahrenheit

Now, I normally run under anyway, so don't be too shocked--
but still! 96.0?
Talk about cold feet!

Hawaii 5-o?

I'm being wisked away Saturday @noon
to some mysterious destination,
only to return on Sunday evening . . .

doubt if that means the beach.

Is Summer Here?

I am getting so much tougher on my grading.
For example, a woman sh*t on a piece of paper
and turned in in for the extra-credit
I had offered her.

I gave it a 65.

Women in my WS200 are getting Cs and Ds.
Unbelievable.
One woman I work with at the Writing Center
agrees that I am handing that class over with ice cream
on the side.

There's nothing more I can do.

I ask for an essay--they give me a single sentence!
Insane.

Half of the class, which is about 6, are close to failing.
My evaluations are going to burn when I read them--

I never thought I would ever EVER think
or utter the following seemingly-self-important--elitist thought:

maybe some people don't belong at the university.

Gasp. I know. Maybe those people just don't belong at certain times
in their lives or for reasons I don't understand . . .

[I mean, I wouldn't belong on a boat at sea; in an IT office;
at a CEO meeting; in a film; or in a surgical unit (as a physician).]

The difference is that the U is a gatekeeper: you can't be X
if you don't do Y.

I've never been in the position where I felt it was time
to rope the door, or redirect to another door--
IT FEELS HORRIBLE.
So we take the disenfranchised, those who's governments
have let them down in oh-so many ways, and say, sure--got a GED?
Well, then, come to college.
Then, lowly English instructors are faced with the dilemma:
"Golly gee, this person doesn't know how to write in complete
sentences, yet, she's done all the work and is sincere (not to
mention her personal narrative was so full of utter anguish)--
do I pass or fail her"?
maybe these people don't give a sh*t about what academics
and scholars are trying to teach or explore . . .
which is ok, but why come?

maybe our society falsely values a university
education to the point where people feel like the only
way to "succeed" is to earn some type of degree
even if they believe the whole process is bologna.
so they half-ass all of their assignments,
but don't tell me.

maybe people are just interested
in the "overage" their student loans provide (2,000+)
a quarter because they've never seen or had access
to those amounts
in single lumps before.

maybe I really am teaching at a MA level and I'm rebelling
against this campus' low expectations
by bashing my head on a brick wall.

maybe my teaching just sucks, everyone hates the class,
and students merely hope to survive with minimal attendance.

maybe WS200 is last on the priority list for real women
in their 30s who have real jobs, real families,
and "real" Math 101 classes.

maybe, probably no of my concerns will matter 10, 20, 50 years
from now. or even tomorrow.
then again, i could help someone get through school
and break the cycle of poverty for generations to come.

back to my original idea: if people do the work, no failing.
Cs.
I need to accustom myself to the idea that A students
probably go onto Yale or something; Bs and Cs are acceptable.

So, why am I wigging out that only 2 women are getting As
(ie. doing the work) in my WS200????

Ack--I need to find some reading on this!

Heartsick about the Straw

Don't you just hate fussing with your mate?


Usually my own second-guessing
and self-reflecting
keep me from pointing fingers too long;
usually, I can't be serious about the feud
for over two hours--
I'll look in his eyes, and then smile.

life's too short and fussing seems too trivial.
Plus, he's great at seeing his own faults too.

Not this time.

This time, a boundary has been crossed,
a limit has been exceeded.
And I need to stand firm b/c people's feelings are being hurt.

(Secretly, I fear this has been a marriage of convienance
for the last 5 or so years.
People change during periods of their life--
what a challenge to hold on to a promise
made 12 years ago to someone who is totally different
by someone else totally different herself!)

"F*ckette"

After _Sex and the City_, episode 50 from season 6,
"The Real Me,"
dropped the "F" bomb about 8 times
in my class today,
the woman in the back huffed and puffed,
gathered her books and notes,
then slammed out of class.

Surrounding students bathed in the drama of that moment.

Secretly bored with the academic apathy of this group,
I suspect that the same woman,
who has missed 70% or more of class,
simply wanted a reason to leave this one too.
We had 40 minutes left and 3 handouts to go through.
What better excuse?

Meanwhile Writing Center drama builds . . .

I'd just rather be removed. I liked the annonimity
of being an adjunct: walk into class, lay my thang down,
and leave. No strings.

Here? Ideally, for the next couple years, I will watch
students either thrive or fail.
It's the failing part that's making me whince.

I just hope no one brings a gun to campus.

A Letter to a Poet Friend: I do standout; I don't fit it

How did I survive MA?

I lived [an hour away], remained friendly and engaged in professional chitchat, and simply didn't participate in activities that weren't career oriented. By second year (much like 8th grade, ehem), alliances had been built and torn down so much that I was among the few standing off to the side amid the rubble.

Bored with each other, I believe my colleagues found me curious--b/c I kept my personal life totally to myself, most didn't realize I even [shocking aspect of myself]. Ironically, I think a few made it a quest to figure out who this [SQ] person was--lol!

Then, naturally, when they found out, most moved on. I can only remember two or three parties at the end I went to (always awkwardly). Sigh. Now? Well, I feel a little more settled in my career and I'm looking around thinking, gee, my social life sucks. The 4 friends I did make in my MA are scattered over the country and our emails have dwindled. Weekends are full of [the mundane], and, well, prison-work (more on that later).

You? Well, you are in a totally different situation. I think poetry is about community. Those patterns of behavior we develop in HS seem to follow and haunt us all the way through adulthood ([my partner] sees it at his office constantly--my Writing Center is full of it).

Personally, I think that's why I studied theory--like bell hooks, it helped me survive. Standing away from the situation, viewing it from an artificial distance, reclaiming an "outside" position in my own terms, and trying to understand myself in terms of social patterns and signifiers, yadda yadda, takes away the hurt feelings.

You? Again, your studies puts you in the center of all those complex ways humans interact and try to have power over each other--sigh. In fact, as a poet, you not only need all of that interaction, but you then have to sort it out and write about it ways that makes sense to the rest of us. Wow. No wonder you are having a rough time. That's my take on it.

So use all of these experiences as fuel for the fire--when you build your poetry high enough, we can all gather around, warm ourselves, and, heck roast marshmellows. :-)

More

Behind the apartment complex
they spread out tattered towels
on the hillside,
rubbed baby oil,
sometimes vegetable oil,
on young limbs
and watched neighborhood boys
scuffle in dust around the old elm.

After a few hours,
when the sun's rays slanted
across the parking lot across the way,
they spat out gum in tall grass
while walking home
with bare feet on hot pavement
and ground bits of glass.

Later that night,
they would wet sheets and spread them flat
on shag carpet
in front of tv sets and box fans,
peeling strips of potato rinds,
soothing aloe,
for hot skin.

Wax Fruit

My mother kept a piece of wax fruit, a peach
to be precise (I remember its artificial fuzz--
now worn off),
that had imprints of my two front baby teeth
from where I once tried to bite it.

This memory always makes me sad, if you knew
more of my circumstance you would understand,
and seeing my own fruit basket this morning
resurfaced it again. Only I have a couple avacados,
a fugi apple, some bananas, and a freaky applepear
hybrid that nature never intended--but they are real
and full of juice. Cucumbers, even in February,
are in the fridge.

Nature/Nurture Debate Still Rages

1. Is homosexuality a genetic trait like gender or race?
2. Can crimonality be traced to a chromozone?
3. Are male brains wired to compute mathmatics more effeciantly than womens'?

4. "If a man and a woman were dropped on the middle of two seperate islands with nothing else to survive but their instincts, wouldn't he kill to live and the woman die?" Spoken with pure authority and conviction.

Answer: "What?!?! Haven't you ever seen Survivor?!?" Asked incredulously.

Rebuttal: "That's a TV show!" Now shouting: "You can't tell me a man couldn't hunt a deer down and skin it--"

The class is roaring; two men sqirm and say that's nasty; one woman hunts with her grandmother--

Me? I watch the clock and wonder what answer they will give when I ask next week on the exam, how epistemology factors into his next rebuttal about the "Cavemen who had instincts to kill, kill, kill."