moveable desert

the nerdier I get...the better I write.

during my poetry lit class today - discussing the nuances of another of Frost's poems, I realized my wrinkled white linen shirt was popping open around the stomach region. The students realized it too, and those in the front row were visibly embarrassed for me, because I wasn't, so I moved behind the podium and stayed there for the rest of class, not missing a line of iambic verse. Poetry excuses me from formality, but keeps me focused.

The buttons, a soft matting of lace, inefficient for spidering my morning together. And so I used a bit paper clip, the black ones that clamp down on big stacks of papers. Then the class got talking about MRSA, how to avoid it - shower and be clean in locker rooms - and then, I bumbled off to get my picture taken along with other COD faculty/staff for the college's big 50 year anniversary hooplas - and there was the college president, standing next to me in line. I didn't realize that these would be full body shots - I was a natural for the camera, the photog said, well, hell I read enough of those damn gossip magazines every week and have picked up he knack for how to pose. I think the leopard-framed glasses made the shoot for me. Those, and the big fat clip on my shirt.

Here is your poetry lit, creative writing, literary magazine professor. Getting ready to write a narrative of Joshua Tree Park vintage B & W film footage - cinematographer unknown - hoorah! I feel like I get to be on MTV. If in word, thought and sound. She's prone to parking in the 15 minute only loading zone, just to see if she can get away without getting a ticket (she always manages this trick!) Who knows that I buy most of my cool, long India sparkle blouses at the CVS pharmacy for $10 a pop? That I favor leopard-print bras?

It's not a far stretch between autistic and artistic. Not a far stretch between low desert and high. The two blend subtlely enough, Joshua Tree high-fiving it with the top lips of washingtonian fan plams in the so called transition zone. That's where I live. Mingling with all of the homies, I claim no one 'hood. The moveable feast, though now it's desert.

So it's okay to wear a marshmallow shoe and eat red hot candies from the $1 store, not to mention that I bought emergency laundry detergent there, too, and (smile) a new toothbrush.
Tell them Willie Boy was here.