Tuesday, Sept. 8, Israeli poet and scholar Adam Schonbrun will be on campus. He will be feautred in a coffee and conversation session that morning at 11 in Nicholson Library, 1st floor, Leonard Hall. At 4 p.m. he will read from his poetry in the Susquehanna Room of the HUB. I hope you will attend.

My Last Year in Graduate School
Adam Schonbrun

Strange thrill downtown
seeing a bright-eyed
cheerleader smile-

During the basketball game
I'd watched her thrown up
in the air caught a glimpse
of the babyfat thighs,
her hands lowered to pull
the mini down-

A modest gesture
that excites me;
all that energy
displayed with hips
shaking back & forth.

Maybe it's because
I lived in an all boys
Rabbinical school
& then got my degree
in a foreign country-

I now appreciate
The plain woman playing
The flute in the 2nd
row of the band,
seated with her Collegiate
braces & freckles & oily curls,
I adore the cheerleaders
& the brassy sounds of the tuba,
maybe I just want to belong
& feel that I'm not always
the outsider, the jewboy
who hears the closed teeth grind:
"Jew me down, Jewboy," and yet

the team spirit's in me,
I want to belong
& shout: Go state, go.
And, I do. The milky
shiksas turn me on.
A breathless chill
overtakes me
when the band plays
& they sway, all firm and full
of Appalachian tradition.

_____
* rabbinical: of rabbis, of Jewish doctrine or law
* state: a state college [university] team
* shiksa: a non-Jewish woman
* Appalachian: Eastern U.S. mountain chain

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