Alice Ju: Real Talk
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by 333, starving, hysterical, out of dress code, dragging themselves through Elm St at dawn looking for a hot breakfast.
What sphinx of cement and aluminum
bashed open our skulls and ate up our
brains and imagination?
Cosgrove! Restrictions! Probation!
Illegal visitations and unexcusable
dickeys!
Students screaming under J. Smith
arches!
Students sobbing in class!
Students weeping in Swasey Park!
Deans! Deans!
Nightmare of Deans!
Deans the loveless!
Deans the heavy judgers of men!
Exeter I’ve given you all and now I’m
nothing.
Exeter two hundred thousand dollars
June 9, 2014.
Can you give me back my own mind?
I won’t write this until the last minute.
Exeter why is your library full of tourists?
Exeter when will you send your students
to college?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into Grill and buy what
I want with my cumulative GPA?
Exeter after all it is you and I who are
poor not the next world (why else would
you ask me to donate, already?)
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a consultant.
Exeter when will you let us wear our
clothes?
Exeter when will you look at my mind,
not my hemlines?
Exeter when will I be worthy of the dress
code?
My best friend is in the Latin Study I
don’t think he’ll come back. It’s sinister.
Exeter are you being sinister or is this
some form of practical joke?
I haven’t read the newspaper for years
Exeter I used to be an idealist when I was
a prep and I’m not sorry.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let our lives be run by
the E-Book?
You’re obsessed by the E-Book.
You rewrite it every year.
It’s always telling me about
responsibility.
Teachers are serious.
Students are serious.
Rohan is serious.
Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am Exeter.
I am talking to myself again.
College is rising against me.
CCO says I’ve got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my extracurriculars.
I say nothing about my sleep deprivation,
health center visits, unexcused dickeys,
midnight screams.
My ambition is to become President
despite the fact that I’m a woman.
Exeter how can I write another made-up
narrative of my lackluster life?
Exeter I will sell you narratives for your
prize money.
Exeter when I was fourteen a tour guide
took me to the Academy Building they
sold us.
Harkness-- everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the reading it was all so
sincere, you have no idea.
Exeter I don’t really want to go to college.
Exeter this is quite serious.
Exeter this is the impression I get from
reading the Humor Page.
Exeter is this correct?
It’s true I don’t want to join the real world,
I’m sick and I need ibuprofen.
Exeter I’m putting my fourth dickey to
the deans.