poem of the day 08.12.15

the old college try

i thought i’d quit

everything there was to quit

until i tried out for the college newspaper

the editors huddled all of us around cubicles

under bad florescent lights

in a room that looked more like

it was made for cold sales calls

rather than cultivating the collegiate facts of the day

and the news kids

talked about responsibility and deadlines

about their readership

which was mostly bored students like me

they talked about circulation

even though you could find their rag

free and almost anywhere on campus

usually in bathroom stalls or garbage cans

they gave me an assignment

to interview a lacrosse player

and, i thought great, not even a real athlete

but i gave it a go

interviewed some floppy haired twink

who was a teaching assistant too

and acted like the professor’s office was his

he was boastful and nauseating

but i sat down under the hard fluorescents

and did my best to pound out a story

for the three people on campus

who wanted to read about lacrosse

the sports editor came in while i was typing

he leaned over my shoulder with his bad breath

and immediately said, no, no, no and no

i stopped typing and we looked at the screen together

he said, look at those paragraphs

i mean, look, man, at how long those paragraphs are

he said, man, kids in college can’t read paragraphs that long

three sentences tops

the paragraph bare minimum, man

then he walked away

to go and give the hockey writer some shit

i sat there for a few more minutes

thinking about the money i was wasting

and all of the debt that i’d have

before i grabbed my shit and left the newsroom

my moby dick of an article

on a fucking lacrosse player of all things

still on the computer with the cursor flashing

decided maybe i’d go out

for the radio station next semester

but only if they let this white boy

play some old soul or rap

or maybe i’d do nothing

which always worked so well for me.