Poem for Today by Joseph Mills

On the Writer's Almanac, this morning, the featured poem was Joseph Mills' "The Guardian" from his collection Love and Other Collisions. It begins:

I don't think my brother realized all
the responsibilities involved in being
her guardian, not just the paperwork
but the trips to the dentist and Wal-Mart,
the making sure she has underwear,
money to buy Pepsis, the crying calls
because she has no shampoo even though
he has bought her several bottles recently.

You can read the rest here. The poem's ending is superb.

As I get busier and busier with my comprehensive exams, never seeming to be able to do the reading I am supposed to do for the day, and so feeling as though I will never catch up, I really miss my friends and family. Not that I have the time to speak to them, in all honesty, or that I have anything to say to them -- my life consisting primarily of having read or not read the day's 140 pages or having taught, with varying degrees of skill, the week's classes.

In truth, reading is not a lonely business. Reading, rather, feels like a connection, like sitting at the foot of masters. I have felt this way reading Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, especially. But then the book is over and I am on to the next book. Stuart Hall and then Paula Gunn Allen and then N. Scott Momaday and then Gayatri Spivak and then Cherríe Moraga again and then Homi K. Bhabha and then Michel Foucault because Dr. Bhabha started to make me tired.

At any rate, I am currently living for connecting with my friends and family through social network sites and email. The encouragement that I get from the internet is about all that there is right now and I am trying to be particularly appreciative about it.