Great mathematicians peering down
from the roof might be able

to compute in their heads
how many steps it’d take me

to cross the street while bleeding,
and if they cared and weren’t

constantly being accosted
by counterfeit pleas from near hysterics,

they’d be as surprised as I am
that my beard is coming in gray

and add a few more zeroes,
for I was told – no, assured –

the sutures would dissolve,
the eye eventually grow back,

only to arrive early this morning
to an unwashed blackboard,

empty desks,
a note blown on the floor,

the ink still damp.

______________________________________________

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, including the e-book Police and Questions (Right Hand Pointing, 2008), available at Right Hand Pointing.

Today’s dispatch has the silver lining — and dark cloud — of voyeurism. Sometimes we can escape to foreign locales and create a new identity, maybe even write a cowboy mystery or two. Hell, that’s what one author did when he packed up and moved to Wyoming. You can too, or you can go to college. Get a degree, kid. But what’s in a degree: See answers in First Things. Maybe what you need is a good scare. If so, head over to NPR, where Sarah Waters’ latest ghost story is dissected. Or you can talk about sex, or at least read about its twisted prominence, in the Stranger. Finally, we’ve got a guide to punk music, Dave Eggers’ plan to save print, and from Lit Mob, a well-written review of a book dedicated to bad writing. — Kevin Murphy

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