1. Finding a Seat 2. Poetry Feedback

1. Trying to find a seat in the recital hall is proving difficult. I know that I am supposed to sit in the back, because I'm white, and there is a sort of reversal of privilege project going on at this particular event, so white folks are supposed to be exposed to the sort of treatment that was bestowed upon blacks during segregation. I'm walking through the seats reserved for black people in the front in order to get to my seat. A black man angrily starts pointing at me and telling me what I already know: to move to the back. I keep walking, furious and confused. 

2. I'm in the laundry room with professor M. Her minimalist home has so much grace paired with its utilitarianism. She has handed me a stack of loose poems held together with orange rubber bands. She's kind of leaning on her elbows on her ironing board, which stands between us, and we're poised to go over the texts. She sees that I'm caught up already on the poems that are marked, however, and she carries on with chores she is doing in the laundry room. 

I'm living here as a sort of artist-in-residence at the house of these two (wedded?) professors over the summer. It's a grey, humid day, too hot for closed doors and windows but too cool to warrant a beach trip. 

I read E's remark on my poems, hungrily. He's marked passages that he finds particularly striking and in large, loop-heavy cursive, he's written a message that is even more personal. At once about the poem, and about what happened between us and another student before I left, his message references a copious reserve of desire. He writes something about "what would have happened in the grass."

I become aware that perhaps M has read the comment. I'm nervous that I am disturbing whatever is between E and M, but there's no tension showing in how M treats me. She appears to simply be waiting for me to be ready to receive her feedback, patiently going about her other work while my stomach does summersaults.