As I arrive in Louisville for my 2nd annual reading of AP English Literature exams, I am greeted by a host of familiar faces and a few cherished friends. We are here to score Advanced Placement essays for the next seven days. Working from 8 until 5 among 12,000+ other readers. We will read each essay as if it were crafted by our prized students. We will read in silence, calibrate several times a day to keep our scores even, be periodically back-read by table leaders, who in turn are back-read by section leaders, all the way up the line to the chief reader.
Ode to Lucky Panties
Perhaps you are thinking an ode is too elevated for mere panties, but I’m here to tell you I experienced a pair of seemingly ordinary panties that transcended the material world like no other talisman… Once on, luck ran through my day like water after a deluge, like electricity after a surge, like dandelions after the rain, like…well you get the idea, their power was unlike any ancient amulet or rabbit’s foot or leprechaun’s pot or four-leafed clover. The good fortune or whatever mystical magical inference you want to label, these panties had it. Yes, had, but before I reveal their sad end, I will start at their mythical beginning…
Zoo Days
All day the rain bounces on and off my green roof
while the dark stratus moving along the horizon
fills the three windows in my third story view;
each formation reminds me of zoo creatures
bound in cages we all visited as kids.
