This is why I'm not getting a Ph.D.

Going to see the Gilmores,
to see Yalies who get dressed up
in dresses & suits & brooches & ties
to have drinks with their friends
on a Friday night,
who pithily talk about intellectual matters.

I want to be clever, have witty conversations while half-drunk
about t.s. eliot and heidegger,

but there’s no room for me here,
no place for me to freak out,
to make perfectly valid comments, like--
What about the pope, huh?
only to get blank stares.
or yell--
No! no! that’s bullshit!--
flailing my hands about,
how i do when i’m myself
around people who know myself.

In my hobo-chic clothes
drinking musty red wine
and smoking spliffs on the sly,
I tell people that I work at a co-op in Vermont
and insist that Bridget Jones Diary 2: The Edge of Reason is a meta-text,
while white couples hold hands limply.