My Cardboard Balcony

The majority doesn't want this kind of government, or this kind of economic treatment, or these kinds of representatives. Why, then, do they refuse to vote? Why, then, do they find their voices muted, or their priorities shifted, or their opinions irrelevant? Look around you - hundreds of thousands of voters disenfranchised. Suppressed, unregistered, removed from polling places. They will take your rights away if you do not use them. October 22nd in California. Register to vote.

by Belinda Roddie Please do not let in the cat. He's mangy and he smells funny. He attacked our basset hound the other day, and I swear he wants to place a curse on my son with his stare. He's lived for longer than I have, and he's missing one paw. It was replaced with a hook because his owner felt it appropriate. They always pretended to be pirates when I was a child, and they truly went whole hog. Like, stealing my lunch money and trying to take over neighbor's boats in the driveway full hog. Come to think of it, I don't think the cat is a cat at all. I think he's an overgrown, shaggy biped who lives in the cardboard hut just outside my neighbor Ted's condo. And I think he's hungry. Just don't be fooled. And don't let him in. This week's prompt was provided by a picture I found on Facebook. That's...that's about it, really. Nothing else to say.

Please turn in your paperwork. Please wait for the bell. Please pretend this gray campus isn't the gateway to a modern Hell. Please remember to study for the test you'll never remember. Then pray that you'll at least survive the very first semester. Perhaps you'll find some newfound cheer when we finally reach December. Then you can burn your final exam and spit upon the embers.

Oh. My goodness. Gravy. It has been a Week. With a capital W. Where do I even begin? Apart from the constant grading, the mixed news I got from a substitute teacher about my classes, an impending administrative observation because that's policy, the sheer amount of stress I see both from faculty and students... Man, I hate being vague here, but I have to be for privacy's sake. I am tired of the piss-poor attitude from some of my students. I love most, if not all, of my students, don't get me wrong, and I want to treat them with respect. However, some of them forget, all too often, that such respect needs to be reciprocal. I am the teacher. I call the shots, I make the rules, I decide who my editors are, and I give out the grades. I am not these kids' buddy just because I happen to treat them as potential equals. They have to earn that treatment. That means not taking advantage of how casual I can be. That means not walking all over me when I give students some sem...

Snark Jar's Getting Full by Belinda Roddie Every time you sass me, you owe me a quarter.

I Walk Around by Belinda Roddie I walk around in circles 'til I trip and fall, my knees all scraped from the debris. I try to speak, and I'm afraid I'll slip into a foreign tongue that I can't speak - or at least haven't spoken since the years in which I hobbled over desert plains to find a new life with my mother dear. I remember my grinning through the pain, icing my feet after so many days of walking without end - in a straight line, over hills and across dunes. As I gaze across the water, I see left behind a father and family I adored. I can't move forward, so I circle more.