Adjuncts

November 16, 2016

“Mean Time” by Peter E. MurphyPosted by

Peter E. Murphy

MEAN TIME

She asked for a pillow.
I brought her a fork.

She asked for a cigarette.
I brought her a sock.

She asked for a newspaper.
I brought her a tea set.

Is this what you mean?
I said.
Is this what you mean?

I poured milk in the toaster.
I spread jam on my head.

Bring me everything, she said, pointing
the fork at me, her darling boy.

I hopped from couch to chair
in the living room.
I flew out the window
as if I were a bird.
I landed on earth, which stunk
of flowers, not dirt.

Forgive me—
the sea breaching the walls
of our house, the chimney crumbling, the bed
clothes on fire—

it was the only way
I knew how to love her.

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

__________

Peter E. Murphy: “When I started teaching as an adjunct in 1982, I was also teaching high school English and creative writing full time. It wasn’t the money, which was pitiful, it was to gain more experience. While I loved teaching, my life was measured out in paperwork. Nights and weekends I sat in a small living room of a small apartment rarely looking up at my wife and three-year old. I missed them. They missed me. I am still at it 34 years later. However, adjuncts at Stockton University are now unionized so the pay is better, and I teach an advanced poetry writing course. Life is good. For me. However, adjuncts are still the Educated Poor, the lowest caste in academia. I see them wandering the hallways looking for a place to lay their load, coffee spilling out of their cardboard cups onto bags of ungraded papers as they try to remember which college they have arrived at, which students they are about to face, what they must have done to deserve this fate.” (web)

 

Peter E. Murphy is the guest on episode #22 of the Rattlecast! Click here to watch …

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November 14, 2016

“Wheat Fields with Reaper” by Sharon Fish MooneyPosted by

Sharon Fish Mooney

WHEAT FIELDS WITH REAPER

after Wheat Fields with Reaper, Auvers,
Vincent van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1890
Toledo Museum of Art

He wears no shrouded hood, no coat of black.
No skeleton or apparition, he,
no grim or aged specter. Here we see
a reaper scything winter wheat that’s stacked
in sheaves of golden grain. There is no lack
of sunshine and the canvas is a sea,
an impastoed panoply, a poetry
of paint demanding viewers to stand back
and view blue mountains under an Auvers sky
with summer clouds, and ponder larger themes—
when we are ripe, the reaping of our lives,
the knowledge that someday, like wheat, we’ll die,
will turn to dust, yet hope to be redeemed
to an eternal place where souls survive.

“The history of those plants is like our own … being reaped when we are ripe.”
—Vincent van Gogh, 1889

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

[download audio]

__________

Sharon Fish Mooney: “I have been teaching online as an adjunct and affiliate faculty for fifteen years. I currently teach nursing research and other courses for Regis University, Denver, Colorado, and Indiana Wesleyan. My interests in poetry, art, and music affect my teaching. I often share with students about conferences I am attending or speaking at and discuss with them ways to integrate the arts and nursing—for example, using metrical poetry in caring for people with dementia. Students often send me their own poems for review and critique.” (website)

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November 11, 2016

“Performance Without Notes” by Jeff McRaePosted by

Jeff McRae

PERFORMANCE WITHOUT NOTES

We were abused by being
made to abuse one another:
who could stand longest
kicked in the crotch? Roll
in that dog shit. Which
arrow can you catch in
your teeth? Divide four
days of garbage by seven
fifth graders with Nantucket
baskets. We lost every time.
Bees snuggled in our soda.
Firecrackers did not dislodge
the beetle from the jellyroll
but after that there was no
telling jelly from jellied beetle.
We were not apprised
of the consequences of our rage
so that later when we went
under the stars and figured
probably god was bullshit
we couldn’t stop from bashing in
the first old man we saw.
A whole high school of girls
walked by in yoga pants.
A brief heaven. Then
a weeping toothless man
with one leg on crutches.
A sad heck. A question
of morality: we figured
he must have survived war,
not raped children. We ran,
we caught him just in time!
When the girls helped lift him
my fingers touched
the marvelous literature
of wrists and I could not escape
the feeling I had been inserted
into the heavy days
of childhood, soaking up
a carnage I was expected
to later turn into exercises.

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

__________

Jeff McRae: “I’ve been an adjunct for thirteen years. Being an adjunct gives me the flexibility to write and provides the uncertainty to make it feel necessary.”

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November 9, 2016

“Meursault Gets a Job as an Adjunct English Professor” by Clint MargravePosted by

Clint Margrave

MEURSAULT GETS A JOB AS AN ADJUNCT ENGLISH PROFESSOR

It doesn’t matter if he forgets sometimes
how to speak English,
slips back into French,
because he doesn’t say much anyway,
just stares at the class,
while his mind drifts off across
the Mediterranean
to that beach in Algiers,

or the softness of Marie’s hair,
or how the ocean breeze
once felt on his skin.

“Aren’t you going to pass out the syllabus?”
a student finally asks at the third meeting.

Meursault shrugs.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says,
“but I could if you’d like.”

Another student raises her hand
and wants to know
about his absence policy.

“Absence is the only policy,” Meursault says,
before he kicks his feet up
on the desk and reaches
in his blazer pocket
for a cigarette.

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

[download audio]

__________

Clint Margrave: “I currently teach English (at least this semester—you never know) as an adjunct at El Camino College and Cal State Long Beach. The word ‘adjunct’ means a thing added to something else, supplementary and inessential. It’s the outsider status that has always informed my poetry.” (website)

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November 7, 2016

“Recap of Yesterday’s Tenure-Track Job Interview in English” by Clint MargravePosted by

Clint Margrave

RECAP OF YESTERDAY’S TENURE-TRACK JOB INTERVIEW IN ENGLISH

They asked me for an adjective
to describe myself as a teacher
and I gave them a noun.

They asked me to roleplay
a situation in which I told a student
she would need to retake the class
and I ended up giving
her a second chance.

Then I asked if the water bottle
provided for me
had vodka in it.

Then I referred to the hiring committee
which consisted entirely of women
as “you guys.”

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

__________

Clint Margrave: “I currently teach English (at least this semester—you never know) as an adjunct at El Camino College and Cal State Long Beach. The word ‘adjunct’ means a thing added to something else, supplementary and inessential. It’s the outsider status that has always informed my poetry.” (website)

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November 4, 2016

“#CarryThatWeight” by Jennifer JeanPosted by

Jennifer Jean

#CARRYTHATWEIGHT

Columbia senior Emma Sulkowicz has been hauling her own dorm mattress around campus every day [because] the student she says raped her is still free to attend the school without formal consequences.
—Slate

My mom was broken by five
or six guys one dawn before I was born.
So that’s gotta be the weight of
a king. & she carries that. Carried that
right past the Hollywood police station on Burbank around noon.
I consider carrying our queen-sized around our apartment
like those “Students for Emma!” from around the globe.
But I’m just a weaker
upper body.
I take on my daughter’s futon.
My mom got it for her at Ikea. It’s a lightweight.
& the idea
is to lug it for about an hour. At home.
Write as I go. Some kind of science, some kind of art.
In order
to relate.
My daughter moves stuffed dogs & pigs off her quilt,
helps me slide the pony-colored twin onto my spine.
She makes me a tortoise.
She takes pictures, Smile. Smile.
Smile. I don’t
think I can bear it a minute. It’s hers.
My daughter’s, my mother’s, all
the grand hers.
& I won’t
where I teach. I teach
so I’d mulled hauling it to the University. But
taking on a big thing like that? Sweating, bending
under that?
You know what lives under a bed.
All the weight
of my frame thumps the ground in the kitchen
as I dump the thing,
hard. My daughter rolls on it, giggles. My pen’s gone, &
my mom was broken by five
or six guys one dawn before I was born.

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

[download audio]

__________

Jennifer Jean: “I believe poetry is a means to real healing, compassion, and change. To these ends, I’ve been teaching Free2Write poetry workshops to sex-trafficking and labor-trafficking survivors so they can tell their stories their way. I believe it is with non-traditional, often vulnerable writers that poetry’s true power can be realized. I was once very vulnerable—I lived in foster care from seven months to seven years old—during and after which I experienced my share of objectification. Poetry helped me contain, explore, and digest these traumatic incidents. My hope is that poetry can help my Free2Write students do the same. My hope is that through this writing Americans can know there’s an awful quick slide from objectification to war, bigotry, and even modern-day slavery.” (website)

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November 2, 2016

“As You Recall the End of Their Marriage” by Brionne JanaePosted by

Brionne Janae

AS YOU RECALL THE END OF THEIR MARRIAGE

he descends. a box, with the old blues records
that taught you to say nigga like you knew what it meant,
heavy in his hands. he has just retrieved some final knick knack

reading glasses or car keys he almost left
behind. for sure it’s dark in that house
that was always too large for safety.

only the television and the small lamp
at the end table light the room.
probably a Bulls’ game on

Michael Jordan moving cross the court
like he still has something to prove or maybe O.J.
on trial. you cannot remember the details,

of whoever’s face it was that the camera caught,
or even the peculiarities in your grandfather’s expression.
you are young then. and though no one has told you

he is leaving for good you wish he would stay
a little longer. how your gaze lingers on the swagger
of his back walking out into the foyer,

the shutter of the door as he exits—
you know better now,
and learn to recall, most clearly, the fists

in your grandmother’s lap, the tightness of her jaw
as he bent down to kiss her where she sat
breathing like a gazelle run down.

you are still afraid once he leaves
how could you know then
he took with him the busted shadow
that lurked so long in darkness here.

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

__________

Brionne Janae: “This is my first year teaching, and I think it’s going as well as can be hoped for. I had heard before I began teaching that the first year is the hardest, so I’ve tried to manage my expectations. I teach at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, Massachusetts, and at this point I’m down to only a poem a month. But I think that makes that one poem a little more special, you know. I’m writing only what’s necessary because I don’t have time for anything else. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the only reason I’m writing that one poem a month is because of the poet friends I have holding me accountable. We get together for food and poems and it feels nice to have my work critiqued instead of me constantly critiquing the work of my students. I do enjoy teaching though. Bunker Hill’s student population is 85% people of color, and so I try to only assign readings by people of color when possible. I think it’s important for students to be able to see themselves in their studies. To read people who know what it’s like to be a first generation college student, to be an immigrant, to be poor and oppressed by the power structure around them, to read people who figured out how to make sense of the particular chaos of their lives as hyphenated Americans. Many of my students have never read people like Gloria Anzaldua who wrote bilingually about being Chicana or read a black man making sense of blackness the way Ta-Nehisi Coates does, and it is wonderful to have that first experience with them. It feels necessary and right the way writing a good poem is necessary and right. My goal for next year is to continue learning how to integrate my life as poet and teacher. Which only translates so far to writing two poems a month instead of one. I am happy with my life and my work, and will continue taking baby steps to making it even better.”

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