Nightmares in the university’s ruins

1. Sessional twister

it’s precarious work evading tornadoes

from clouds over the Qu’appelle Valley ridge

dirty black twisters reach down writhe and surge

toward the prairie farm house where you

shelter with your wife and toddler daughters

in the west one funnel hooks down from the clouds

like the tentacle of a giant furious kraken

then through the kitchen window you watch

more form on the eastern ridge so it’s time

to punch in and scramble down to the basement

it’s barely a crawlspace under the floorboards

with no headroom to sit upright no bedroom to hide in

never mind check your email or complete timesheets

the girls play like it’s a game hiding under blankets

you squint through the boards worried where your next

paycheque’s coming from and whether they’ll question

the hours you’ve put in for including the hour you

needed to complete the paperwork properly and how

much pay they’ll grind away like the funnel up there

grinds away the house above the hollering floorboards

through the cracks the gale needles grit into your skin

tell everyone to lie down flat and close their eyes

nothing for it now but to pad your resumé resign yourself

to the full time job hunt expecting only that soon twisters

will touch down long enough to earn names like hurricanes

2. Tenure track of the living dead

it’s a full time career fleeing zombies

while the conference carries on nail shut the bunker

equip it with rations and citations for the coming winter

inside hands raise to offer lectures disguised as questions

outside hands grasp and teeth gnash to grind flesh

your weary ragtag research network sticks to waterways

wide abandoned malls and grant writing workshops

crosses the blood-flooded acropolises of old academe

climbs a rope ladder up through the library’s glass floor

toils in small groups like the worst kind of homework

you review the terms and conditions with your colleagues

critique the carefully crafted applications they submit

check the credentials that prove they live

assess their annual performance according to rank

ensure they’re not about to succumb about to turn

you need the student associations on your side to dispatch

the undead who keep on your cogently argued case

they swim dissolving after you they swarm the dorms

you advise your rising star grad student to revise and resubmit

set a firm deadline for the defence against infection seminar

the dean seconds you to the campus torture chambers

where the provost processes student bodies for export

where reanimation-centred budgeting dictates the hard decisions

now you know but you signed the nondisclosure agreement

they won’t let you live but they will promote you to associate