“The Cascade of a Sudden Epiphany” © Bill Wolak
To Sing the Campus Electric
Oh, university,
We sing your well-swept quad and manicured trees and fountains blowing,
And dirt paths in all directions, because the great American pedestrian
Will make his or her or their or thon own way,
Regardless of path designed by six figure consultants
Or the signage on which the president’s advisory board spent a half a million bucks.
Oh, college town, your
Streets bustling with pedestrians
Who could maybe, please, look both ways once in their lives, to avoid
The muscle cars throatily pounding down the road,
Their glasspack mufflers calling, oh, howling for attention and booming bass
That vibrates our very spleens.
Oh, stubble-bearded man-bun wearers
With not one single other hair on your manscaped bodies,
And your giddy passengers,
Take care with the scooters new to town
Threatening to tip with every bump in the road
And every sidewalk crack, and it bears mentioning, oh, man-bun,
That the instructions on those things explicitly caution against more than one rider,
And driving on sidewalks is prohibited.
Oh, students, do you live in the dorms, those brick and steel boxes
Cramming in not one but two and sometimes even three beds
And weirdly long mattresses with the depth of pancakes
to toughen the bodies to vitalize the minds of you, lo,
Embarked on the journey of education, tomorrow, tomorrow, after tonight’s
Blasting of Xenomorphs with jaws within jaws
In the stupefying splendor that is Aliens: Fireteam Elite,
while others lie blissed alone in their beds, phones alight, TikToks a-ticking
And Yik Yak oh, lo, so full of complaints
that no one in the dorms ever really wants to hang out, like, in person.
Do you dine in the halls abrim with their loops of froot and salad bars and
pizza options, both pepperoni and sausage, ready at hand night
After night, and usually the only safe bet, in the face of that pasta
That really looks sketchy and the chicken that, oh, my, the less said the better, and
At least there’s the ice cream machine, ready to swirl onto the cones
The evening’s great ending, as you wait for Wednesday.
Wednesday, Wednesday, gotta get down on Wednesday,
Which is the new Thursday, which in its own time
Was the new Friday
And sees crowds of tenacious, tireless youths in tattered jeans and sports jerseys and sparkling tops
On their way in scrums to the local bars to imbibe of the finest frothing ale and well drinks half off,
The floors sticky and young men and vital women alike
dancing in those elevated cages next to the guy who won’t stop shouting, at so
many decibels,
“Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey!”
All this before the staggering dance home past the frat parties beckoning, insisting
That the tremulous the youths have just one more and dance because
There are “whores in this house, some certified freaks.”
And, oh Brother, oh Brother of Sig Phi Ep and Delta Chi and Kappa Kappa Kappa,
Oh, lusty brother in shirt sans sleeves,
O Brother, oh bruh, o smoker of bong, adulator of inspiring sativa so skunkily odiferous
And indica promising you shall witness the evening’s splendors from the lock of
that couch,
Oh, brother, who could be drinking a fine and hoppy IPA brewed with the most sparkling
of American
Waters and golden wheat made into barley as brown as the burliest bear, hopped with cascadian fruits
Floral with citrus and elements of grapefruit, grown in the refulgent wet of our great Washington state,
Oh, brother, instead you pour down your glorious throat one weak and timid and sour
Natty Lite after
Natty Lite after Natty Lite.
Oh, brother of lusty stalwart loins, no means no, thank you very much.
Oh, vomiting young freshman, your hair held back.
Oh, young soul urinating behind the car.
Oh, glide home safely, as if rafting on the glorious Oconaluftee, Rappahannock,
or Nooksack,
Divine, exultant, native, divining, fitful, careering
Over the chalked sidewalks singing the praises of Geology club,
Which, truly, there is such a thing, and long songs of lithified sediment
Decrying the great American violence of the long gun, assault rifle, the pistol
And those swirling, purple and yellow lines waging a war of powdery words against
abortion and
For the pro of choice, almost as if anticipating tomorrow
The preachers of all stripes on these same sidewalks,
Lo, the old white men with their little green bibles
And the women of coiffed hair and friendly hellos and hellos and hellos,
Witnessing every day,
Because Jehova ain’t gonna witness himself.
And, oh, traipse along like this, day after day until
Game day, when
Glorious teams meet in manly combat,
Aligning themselves stately with the great American animals, the bobcat, the lion,
the bear,
Though I say they should sing the lesser known American indigenouses,
The otter, opossum, the beaver,
And let their fans chant in unison, in support of this great endeavor,
This marching back and forth down the field of battle,
Hooray for the struggling stoats, down by thirty points because, honestly,
They’re way out of their league, much to the refulgent suffering of alums,
Like Mom and Dad, who made the trip to tailgate and relive
Their own glorious days of getting convulsively hammered
Beyond cognition, only now, in the autumnal and rich splendor of their later lives,
They need but stumble, afterward,
To the Marriott, across the avenue, for $600 a night,
And wake both remorseful and somehow again enlivened to have greasy eggs,
once more,
At the local dive that hasn’t changed
In thirty freaking years.
Oh, Student Athletic Center,
Oh, capricious golf of Frisbee,
Oh, University Union, with its very own Starbucks and Panera!
Oh, but students, you have come to this august institution to learn,
To traipse the shiny halls of teeming buildings named in honor
Of glorious, old, white dudes,
To enter classrooms filled with those stiff, plastic chairs
And the swiveling desks that won’t ever lay goddam flat,
Where the professor in his or her or their or thon semi-casual dress clothes
Shares intoxicating knowledge of clay mineralogy and molecular engineering
And biocellular integrity and, for most, business principles 101
And when to use the comma and when not,
While attempting also to join the vibrancy that is youth
With a meme or two on screen to start the lesson
And/or the occasional use of joyful lingo like “slaps” and “slays” and “GOAT”
And invitations that students “spill the tea”
About the latest campus gossip.
All this so you, oh, student, can enter the glorious American enterprise, meaning,
these days,
A job, if you’re lucky, one that is long and life-filling and STEM, if we’re being real,
Because everyone shits on the humanities
As impractical as hell.
Oh, student, oh, town, oh, college of unnamable ardors, of thy
Bell tower, which, not many know, is really just a speaker
Proclaiming on the hour,
It is this heart, as well as
Thy side streets with their flimsy and somehow very expensive apartment
Complexes accessible by not one or two but three different bus lines,
Oh, it is of you,
We sing.
Matthew Roberson is the author of four novels—1998.6, Impotent, List, and the recently published campus novel Interim. He also edited the collection Musing the Mosaic: Approaches to Ronald Sukenick. His short fiction has appeared in Fourteen Hills, Fiction International, Clackamas Literary Review, Western Humanities Review, Notre Dame Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and others. He lives and teaches in central Michigan, where he also directs the CMICH Press Summit Series.
Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who has published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages and photographs have appeared recently in the 2024 Dirty Show in Detroit, the 2024 Rochester Erotic Arts Festival, the 2020 International Festival of Erotic Arts (Chile), the 2020 Seattle Erotic Art Festival ,the 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival, and Naked in New Hope 2018. He was a featured artist in the book Best of Erotic Art (London, 2022).