Something on one of the kiosks
upset a Regent, so the Provost
told the Dean, and the Dean
told Ramona his Administrative Assistant,
and Ramona told Jacquie the Work Study
to remove all offensive materials
from bulletin boards, walls, trees
and light poles on campus.

Jacquie was too scared of Ramona
(Who wouldn’t be?) to ask
what offensive meant.
 
She thought the Dean was pretty offensive,
the way he talked golf all the time,
but since he never got his picture
on any posters, she couldn’t take him down,
and nothing else bothered her --
not with the family she came from --
so she really didn’t do anything
till Ramona handed her a copy
of the University Speech Code
written by a bunch of Ph.D.s,
and which Jacquie, with only
a high school diploma (Secretarial Track)
couldn’t decipher any more
than the blackboard after
a Calculus class.

Look,
said Ramona,
I don’t understand it either.
Just get rid of anything
that might bother
a rich Republican woman over sixty.

So Jacquie tore down
any piece of paper
with a cute girl on it,
figuring they’d make
an old lady jealous,
and she tore down anything
that made fun of President Bush
(Wasn’t he a Republican?)
and she tore down all
lesbi-gay stuff, anything
pagan or Catholic,
Native American, African American or Hispanic,
ads to sell musical instruments
(Old ladies like that
would probably hate garage bands)
and requests for rides
(Get your own car! she’d probably say).

So Jacquie was standing
in Bluersch Hall, trying
to decide whether
a Green Party ice cream social
would bother the Regent
when a bunch of students surrounded her
and started yelling,
which made her cry.

Then a bunch of suit people
marched into the Dean’s office,
and Ramona sat outside biting her thumb
while Jacquie tried to figure out
what she’d do for a job.

Finally they all went away
and Jacquie was transferred
to Physical Education,
which was fine with her,
‘cause she could swim on her breaks.

Probably other stuff happened
about the posters,
but over in PE they didn't
talk about it, and Jacquie soon forgot--
except to remind herself
never to work that close
to the bigshots again.

hey rick s. -- nice to see your work here.  I like this one. Like how the hierarchy is set up at the get go; like how J character materializes; esp. like the republican women over 60 bit; and all the ripping J does.   Might end it with J's transfer to PE and the swim breaks, but like it all the same. 

I agree with you, Lynn.
The last strophe sounds like you're trying to wrap
something up that doesn't need wrapping, Rick.

Maggie

Had me end to end.  Good read.  Think along with rest that last strophe could go. 

Thanks for the read.

D

Interested on how the poem feels to you with last stza removed.

Rick

It leaves a slight air of mystery for me.

dw

I like it this way....the ending is simple.....(know what I mean?)   ;D

xo Michelle

I like this. Look forward to more. I am distracted by an inconsistent use of punctuation here, as in the following:

Native American, African American or Hispanic,
ads to sell musical instruments
(Old ladies like that
would probably hate garage bands.)
and requests for rides

Why is there a period at the end of the parenthetical remark, and why isn't there on after the closing parenthesis?

rick -- a quick stop by the site and note to say I like the read w/o the earlier end strophe.  ld

Jay,

I removed the offending intra-parenthetical period and put it at the end of the sentence.  Grammar book says that parenthetical sentences inside other sentences do not take periods as end punctuation.  I left the ?? because I didn't want to risk mis-reading.

Rick

Rick,

The revisions are cleaner and the narrative more interesting. A question arises for me: Why are there line breaks and what purpose do they achieve? If this were read aloud, would the listener hear the line breaks--or is not important? I am curious why we sometimes write what is clearly a narrative moment with line breaks.

larry

Larry,

I'm attracted to story, always have been.  Time was when most stories were told in verse -- Beowulf, The Odyssey, Gilgamesh.

The poem is running roughly a four-beat line.  If read aloud, there should
be a half-comma pause at the line end, usually.  Since I'm also working with a conversational style, I'm letting that take precedence, and I'm discovering the rhythm in the piece (and highlighting it through line breaks) rather than imposing a pattern on the piece.

Thanks for asking.

Rick

Thanks, Silent, you old archive diver.  I'd been thinking fondly about this poem.  Added a few lines awhile ago, and put them here at the end of the poem.

R