I used to be brave. Emancipation

eludes me now. There’s nothing real

in what I get paid to do. Rhetoric

and composition, in-text citation

as useful to my ‘students’ as sex

education to celibate eunuchs. Pedagogy

is the ideological gloss. As a boy

I had a penchant for walking out. Life

is possible as necessity-cum

-contingency. In the way of a Notion? Desire

must become a drive. I used to fly.