VISITING CHAIR

1 4 7 R V I S I T I N G C H A I R J U S T I N Q U I N N At night, the teaching done, I’d have a beer and watch the fireflies float out of the woods. A few miles down the road, the neighborhoods had homicides for most days of the year. A loose end six months long. No syllabus. I started reading Gibbon. Took up karate. A young guy from Homeland Security would come occasionally to train with us. On many porches, the national flag’s unfurled. New wars began when others reached their end. A ghost came whispering, You’re in the Empire, friend. One day, out of the blue, our eldest opts to walk alone to where the school bus stops four hundred yards into the big bad world. ...