13-31

The Tenured or the Bored

What has Emily Brontë done for me
lately? Nothing, I can honestly
say, nothing much at all. And yet
the name Heathcliff still haunts
my head like the petulant guest
he's always been, the result of
a month spent with my matriculated
nose in the middle sister's
syllabus-bound book, another of
"those things they make you read"
according to my teenage son.

What has Emily Brontë ever done
for me? Aside, I mean, from
take up permanent residence on
the reading lists of English teachers
far and wide, generations of yawning
children beyond indifferent to
the laments of the long-ago lovelorn,
the decades-old favorite of the
tenured or the bored. And what,
I'm asking, is Emily Brontë going
to do about the couple hundred pages
and several hours that I'm never
getting back?

by Eric Evans

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Eric Evans is from Rochester, NY where he resides with his wife, Diane, and son, Henry. His work has appeared in Artvoice, decomP magazinE, Tangent Magazine, Posey, Xenith Magazine, Anobium Literary Magazine, Pemmican Press, Remark, a few anthologies, and more. He has published seven collections and three broadsides through his own small press, Ink Publications. He is the editor of The Bond Street Review as well as the recipient of the 2009 Geva Theatre Center Summer Academy Snapple Fact Award. Read more of his work at inkpublications.com