Why I love my job

because a student passed this poem along to me. Because two of my students (one of whom also passed this poem along) went to see Eleanor Wilner and I didn't even dangle the extra-credit biscuit out for enticement.

All my things made it off before or super-well-before their deadline. I celebrated with a tofu wrap and an afternoon soda with a pretty boy. Well, and maybe a little trinket or two, if you must get technical about it. And a filmy vintage shirt all spinny with ballerinas: peach, lemon, babiest-blue. A shirt of delicousness. Celebrated I have. And so should you.

Wishing you all the sundaeist Sunday and poetry:
A Boy's Guide To Arson
Pinch of Chinese gunpowder.
Strike-on-box match. So cheap
Even strangers might ask you
For a smudged sketch of hell.

A little poison now and then
Makes for agreeable dreams.
It's how the spirit becomes a camel,
The camel a lion, the lion a child.

String the bow of regret.
Shoot the arrow of longing.
Learn to speak falsely;
The more you learn the less

You'll crave joy. To whom
Do we owe these convulsions,
These raptures of transport? Sick people
Have always been among us.

Preachers of the afterworld preach
Death. You could spend all night
Pulling off their fright wigs, it ends
The same way. Touching the firewall

With fingers of pyromaniacal intent?
Now that's something to consider.
Stars are ashamed of their ebb, and nothing beats
The ravenous tang of gasoline.

--Jarret Keene