My Cardboard Balcony

This week, I began work as an instructional assistant in a summer school program. My work consists of everyday mathematics for third graders and garden work with students from K-5. It's interesting, to say the very least. Being a writer, reader, and musician first and foremost, it's different to tackle fields and studies that I'm not particularly strong in. Not that I can't do everyday math, and not that I don't like gardening. I just don't know much of the latter and don't think much of the former. Some things come so naturally that you just don't pay attention - like times tables, being so ingrained in the left side of your brain. Other things, like gardening for me, have me more as a witness than a doer. So I'm definitely working slightly outside my comfort zone. But I am still doing what I want to do - teaching. This job has immensely beefed up my references and résumé. And considering that, after visiting my girlfriend, I began worrying abou...

Four Motives, Four Locomotives by Belinda Roddie I rode upon the train marked Stallion Bearing my old war medallion Capped with rotting gold And Stallion kicked and strutted high From tumbling through the cold To crush the frost with spinning hooves That toppled on battalions So was it I rode Stallion I hopped the next train red-stamped Lion Bearing crest of family, trying Not to show my pride But Lion roared with pride of own And trampled countryside While mud and grass were scattered far By paws that spurred the dying So did I conquer Lion The third I leapt upon was Dragon Drinking heavily from flagon I recalled my sin While Dragon snorted blackened flame And burnt blue horizon Were made with wings, the tracks forgot, It’d sail without wheels lagging So dreamed I riding Dragon My nightmare nearly through, on Thunder Was my heart then torn asunder By my wish for home But Thunder yearned to make me wail As lightning lashed my bones And locomotive raged through storm That thrust m...

Crystal couldn't believe it. This was the fourth time in a row that Mrs. Prehistoric (actually Mrs. Presley, but the T-rex arms and the scaly skin said otherwise) had given her detention, all for giving her a "bad look." Delinquent? Her? It was ridiculous. She just wanted to read her Thoreau and Emerson and whoever and get the Hell out of the way of everyone else.