ADMINISTRATOR’S CORNER: A Poem By Jack DeGioia

Our president has decided to take up poetry, and you will probably recognize this piece from the broadcast e-mail you received of it. He has also forced us to print it here in exchange for not suing us for various acts of libel against him and his family.





under his desk

a university president
sits under his desk
drinking a ginger ale
he dislikes the dark and people and purple and himself

i hate doing work
he thought
why can’t i be in china or canada or calcutta
why did norovirus make me come to campus
i don’t like it here

he cried in his box of girl scout cookies
in his stuffed winnie the pooh
in his lisa frank memo pad
that he is too afraid to use for memos
in his wife’s bra
in these trinkets he keeps here under the desk where he hides

an employee in the next room ghostwrites the president’s upcoming book on poverty
as the president wallows in his shame
a crippling fear of people finding out his illiteracy, his asexuality,
his trinkets that are the only joys in his life

he cries and cries and thinks about his son
why is my five year old more a man than myself
when he grows into a teenager
will he beat me up like all teenagers of my past
and how can i hide my giant crocheted portrait of him nude





This message was posted by Sonia Jacobson on behalf of President DeGioia as authorized by the Provost.