poems by owen lucas

UConn campus 1st floor hallway
shining with tube light white
on 100 metres checkerboard lino
dull cream color, occasional square
dotted pastrami pink or seaweed
green. Forever walls house green
office door frames, kinks down
a perfect vanilla spine, each faculty
a new vertebrae with novelty
coffee mugs in place of cartilage,
motivationals and fliers plastered
to the doors peeling so slightly
like day old sunburn. The dull
midday ripples the far tiles from
a big Mondrian criss-cross glass
wall down the corridor's end.
Every door has its number
but the last is steel barred and
badged EXIT lightbulb-retina-
afterimage red, in the night
this will be the only scenery.
Pastoral; Vivaldi "Spring", steady
light of fire escape, sheepish
quiet lowing of security camera
servos as it turns its head,
some peanut sucking joe has
his hand on the joystick tonight.
Ha. By day the flora fauna just
consist of the water fountain's
sparse inexplicable bellowing fan,
and the goatish melodrama of
some lecturer banging on about
the American War of Independence.