Poetry by Julie Weiss

How many words does it take
to tear off a student’s last garment
of dignity? At the end of this message

a semester’s worth of toil will 
self-destruct. My final grade reeks 
of cheap cologne, swigs of beer, pant

and claw. It stands on my transcripts, 
shuddering, as if someone had thrust 
its legs open. See, the clichés 

you taught us to trash, hurled like 
scrap metal at your pack of faces, 
apparitions that have gorged

on my gut for years. I’m trying 
to remember if you swaggered 
around campus in a puff of innuendo, 

intentions snarled up in your beard.
If your author’s charisma lured 
the most sheepish among us 

into your forest scene, overgrown 
with fantasies. Did our collegiate 
asses catch fire in the shrub 

of your gape as we left your office, 
notebooks in hand? The ticket offer, 
shot willy-nilly across states, crash-

lands in the second paragraph, 
obliterating the lamb-soul in me. 
My prize-winning story, framed 

and polished, retches all over 
its characters at the guile of your pseudo-
guidance. When you say travel light

you mean fold my naked body 
into a suitcase. Rise your action bam 
to the climax. Let you drag me, 

flat and disposable, 
through the oil-slicked alleyways 
prowling your denouement.

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay books, and a chapbook, The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, published by Bottlecap Press. Her “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was selected as a finalist for Sundress’s 2023 Best of the Net anthology. She won Sheila-Na-Gig‘s editor’s choice award for her poem “Cumbre Vieja,” was named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize, and was shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite’s 2021 Microchap Series. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her most recent work appears in ONE ART, Wild Roof Journal, and Ghost City Review, among others. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children. You can find her at: https://www.julieweisspoet.com/.

Photo by onehundredseventyfive on Unsplash