August 14: Long Week, Fluid Semester, "A Pig's Orgasm Lasts 30 Minutes"

Another short post this evening.

It has been a long week.  Next week will be longer as I head back into the classroom at the university.  I would be lying if I didn't admit to a certain amount of anxiety about the prospect.  However, throughout the pandemic, I've been a frontline worker in healthcare, even though I've been an insulin-dependent diabetic since I was thirteen.  For me, it's either work, and risk exposure to Covid, or not work, and lose everything.  So, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work I go.

Of course, the administration at the university keeps using the term "fluid" when describing this upcoming semester.  Translation:  face-to-face classes could be cancelled before we ever meet face-to-face.  It's Orwellian double-speak.  All summer long, I've received e-mails from the college telling me to be prepared to "pivot" this fall with my teaching.  Fluid.  Pivot.  I'm learning an entire new educational vocabulary.

I'm not complaining.  It's just my reality, and the reality of every teacher across the United States and world.  Teach in a classroom, but be prepared to teach online.  Teach half in-person, half-online, but don't diminish any of the class content.  Teach completely online, but somehow keep the entire class engaged.  I've been teaching in higher education for over 25 years, and I have never faced so many challenges.

So, tonight, I am slightly overwhelmed.  I will get over it.  And I'll be fluid, ready to pivot when I need to.  If there's one thing that 2020 has taught me, it's that nothing is certain.  (It has also taught me how to smile with my eyes while mouthing the words "fuck you" behind my face mask.  See, face masks are effective.)

I have another new poem to share this evening.  At least, I think it's a poem, or will be, eventually.  Written last night, it is about pig orgasms.  Something to take my mind off the coming days.

Saint Marty is ready for a miraculous weekend.

A Pig's Orgasm Lasts 30 Minutes

by:  Martin Achatz

A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.  This from a pig farmer who hasn't slept in two weeks.

His wife left him.  His children, one by one, have disappeared, leaving notes on the kitchen table:  "I am tired of so much passion."

Now that he is alone, some nights, the pig farmer stumbles into the barn to watch the swine orgy, listen to their sweaty foreplay, satisfied thrusting grunts.  And then, after several minutes, the moment arrives.  Long and loud as an air raid siren, it goes on and on and on and on, makes the cows in their stalls look up with envy, the mares in the corral nicker, tremble in want.

And the pig farmer sits in the manure pile, wonders if his wife still wears her wedding ring.