Observation Day

None of my students wore their best clothes.
They filled the classroom back to front,
as they ordinarily did, with lumbering shrugs.
Still my best kids knew how to
play their favored profs to the observer.

I’d written out in chalk Emily’s 479th
on the grey slate board in front
of the stiff-spined crossed-ankled girls who awaited
the department chair as if a Beatle
was about to bound onto the stage.

Introduction to Literature was required back then.
The Chair was a staunch New Critic.
I was an adjunct hoping for another semester.
Cleanth Brooks and the rest of the
boys were losing ground to the Frenchmen.

But a close reading was expected by
the one who I hoped would not
grimace and look away as the silence
after my questions lingered like a gambler
timing a bluff at a poker table.

I asked about rhyme, and its absence.
They asked about gossamer, tippets of tulle.
I asked about how to reconcile Death
and Civility, and the observer’s eyes fell
to her hands, right resting on left.

In the debrief weeks later, the Chair
busied herself, stroking a pencil with her
fingertips. “I know you know the material,”
she said, her eyes nearing a smile.
“Can you open them up to joy?”

First published in LIPS Poetry Magazine issue 63/64, June 2026