AMENDMENT TO THE PLEDGE I SIGNED PROMISING TO NOT PROMOTE RADICAL THEORIES ABOUT THE OVERTHROW OF THE STATE WHILE TEACHING FOR THE STATE

Something about each self 
in its construction working at 
being barrier & window 
& this flimsy screen door called I
made me draw a circle & give it 
eyes. What should I put in my self
I said. You eat, they said. 
So I gave it the orange, 
the cold Quaker oats. 
You see things they said so I drew them, 
drew institutional fluorescence, 
the fake Greek plantation 
pillars outside the building 
named after some Confederate. 
What else I do, I said. 
You grow hair they said 
so I gave it hair, lots of hair. 
Big laugh (I have long hair). 
You go here and there they said, 
so I indicated direction. 
You yap they said 
& I said but how do I know 
what to say & they said 
you say what you see. 
So the arrow that goes 
in the eyes comes out the mouth. 
After a while we had moved on 
to a picture of a taxidermized 
German shepherd 
sitting atop a flat wolf pelt. 
It was projected 
at the front of the room. 
What did you expect, I said. 
Something human, one said. 
It’s about the fallacy of progress, said another. 
After class some of us walk across 
a parking lot which has been ripped up 
so the earth is exposed. 
They dug up the bodies of the enslaved 
last week & moved them 
somewhere else. Off 
campus. Some of us 
walked into school thinking 
we made a choice. 
Across the street from the parking lot 
you can see into a graveyard 
left unpaved when everything 
bought was covered up. 
Some of the graves are green.