The Professor's Performance Anxiety

Let's workshop this bitch!

The Professor’s Performance Anxiety

His war on stumbling in speech led not so much
to transcending unease but to honing the skill 
to suck conversations into areas of familiarity,
where prepacked constructions could unfurl 
with envious fluidity.—His war was informed,
though. He knew that intimate connection—
which he wanted more than being a spectacle
merely to behold as if some alien archangel—
called for, say, tossing in an “um” here or there,
or peppering what otherwise would be a barrage
with a few staged faces of silent contemplation. 

Real speech stumbles just as real sex farts, of course.
Real speech is not always so oiled and fluorescent,
so bereft of concealments that only foreplay—
its patience, its caring questions—can uncover.
Such ruptures humanize us, make us relatable.
The jazzman does not bombard us with notes. 
Unless perhaps he puts himself above the music,
he plays the rests. Pauses, silences, line breaks 
bring into relief the meat between. The class 
feels relief when the professor stumbles: space
opens up to breathe and, of course, to take notes.

*This poem is unpublished