University students
spend their most scholarly hours
dressed in rags, sitting bum-sweating
in front of a computer screen,
or lying on a bed strewn
with review sheets;
these are the critical hours
that are graded later
by profs equally disheveled ,
crouched at haphazardly adorned desks
scrunching brows in utter befuddlement
at a student's use of the word "tangentially"
(as, tangentially, that essay was about
Ernest Hemingway's tendency
to "tangentially" stitch
short stories together as if they were a whole...)
but no, the point is: scholarship is not glamorous,
it's not somehow funky, suave or eye-catching,
it's tedium and lots of it to get through,
and I wonder, sitting here at my desk
half-dressed in old T-shirt and underwear,
if I can look down at myself and pronounce,
"Why, don't I look educated today."
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