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This writing was accepted for publication
in the 84 page perfect-bound issue...
Down in the Dirt magazine (v119)
(the September / October 2013 Issue)




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Ode to My Old Third Shift Instructional Support Job

Josette Torres

The bulletin board on the first floor, covered in Take
Back the Night posters, gave me a chuckle as I checked

each classroom: flip on light, walk across room, push mouse,
point remote at projector. I had already taken back the night

with each step across the quiet. My nightly tasks were too easy,
the taking, the checking, two minutes flat if I was on point.

The sheer amount of keys I carried would leave permanent damage
to a would-be attacker’s face, but at two o’clock in the morning

the only damage being done was to undergraduate livers
in the bars blocks away from campus, from me. Drunks

shuffled and stumbled and fell and bellowed their way
across darkened grass as I locked one building and unlocked

the next. I was paid to walk unafraid then, a forty-five cent
shift differential separating me from the dayside crew. They handheld

instructors, talking them down from computer-mediated
cliffs, while I floated in an iPod-generated cloud between schools

of higher education. Students drank themselves silly while
I climbed stairs, sat on chairs in empty labs, ate dinner at four a.m.

in deserted lounges. The silence between midnight and sunrise
was why I did it. The sound of my breath in the dark was why I stayed.



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