Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Adjunct
for Wallace Stevens and Billy Collins
By Marcia Newfield
I.
Serfs,
scraping the ground
for sustenance.
Strangers in the castle.
II.
Among four hundred full-timers
the silent servitude
of eight hundred adjuncts
circling the moat.
III.
Troubadours,
sharing ourselves with strangers
who in another season
will not remember our names,
nor we theirs.
But, ah, we love together, we celebrate
our song.
IV.
An adjunct and a backpack are one.
An adjunct and a backpack and a
book bag
are one.
V.
Foresters,
clearing paths to poems,
formulas, networks,
making space for light,
rhythms of stars and soil.
VI.
Travelers,
laden with tools,
trudging dusty roads,
ready to work at a moment’s notice.
VII.
O, Righteous Administrators,
why do you imagine ivory towers?
Do you not see how the adjuncts
nurture the students about you?
VIII.
Pilgrims,
walking, walking
onward to a shrine.
Pausing at a tavern
for a beer.
IX.
Merchants
of possibility.
Trading what is
for what could be.
X.
Knights
among us, practiced
through long apprenticeships
in the arts of swordsmanship.
XI.
Mothers,
always mothers
guiding young ones.
Growing
along with them.
XII.
Scholars, artists, jugglers, shamans.
The adjunct is everywhere
a surprise.
XIII.
I do not know which to prefer,
the beauty of inflections
or the beauty of innuendoes,
Adjunct Equity Now
or just after.
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