Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Freshman English

Image from de.wikipedia.org

Robert Frost, I stopped loving you when I started hating him—
the professor who wore the same polyester slacks to every class,
and ranted about his stepmother and dot matrix printers
(he loathed them both in equal measure),
who said listen here missy when he didn’t like my questions,
and collected our papers but never returned them,
who dismissed Dickinson as useless,
and found shampoo pointless—
It was all his fault. He filtered all your images
through the pool of sweat on his upper lip
and the green stuff stuck between his bottom teeth,
leaving only snow and bugs
and cows with shriveled udders
and boys who have no business using buzz saws
and middle-aged men who wander in the woods
worrying about walls and whining about apples.
I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let him sully
your pristine New England verses. But I was too tender.
I was only eighteen. And you seemed so old.
And he was so mean.

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