IRONY OR PARADOX, I ALWAYS CONFUSE THE TWO
Michael Estabrook
I’ve decided I’m not taking any
more classes at the Harvard Extension School,
I’m dropping out of the Master’s
program in American Literature and Language.
I’m 52 after all, with thirteen years
of college and two Master’s degrees
already that I don’t fucking use.
I tell my wife I’m stopping. She’s happy,
always thought I was wasting my time anyway.
I smile, “But the class this week was useful,
I got a poem out of it.”
She’s not a poet so doesn’t understand
what I’m saying, stands before me cocking
her head like a confused spaniel.
“I mean, discussing TS Eliot and Ezra Pound
in class inspired a poem of my own,
it popped right out of me, isn’t that great?”
She shrugs, “I suppose so,
but a poem about what?” “It doesn’t matter
really, but it was about the young pretty
blonde sitting in front of me,
the girl with the diaphanous eyelids.”
“Oh,” she says, “and I’m supposed to be
happy about that?”
