Ned preferred his own company over
pale interface with others who crowded out
his inner joy. Even his wife lived a life
of her own within these walls and down the hall.
He looked to his students in whom he ceded
an ability to invent some germ
of genius in writers whom students were
assigned to read. He would drum up a theory
he sold to these impressionable young,
persuaded to claim their respective tickets
to an effete membership in what
amounted to a cult that feigned shared
understanding of some kernel of thought,
subtle if not downright false, buoyed by
other acolytes chuffed at the honor
of being allowed into this cabal.
Sheila E. Murphy
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‘