Welcome back! We’re here for a second week of celebrating National Poetry Month here at The Beacon, and this highlighted post comes from English Dept. Chair Kevin Sweeney. Kevin is working endlessly with other staff members across all departments to spread poems each week to celebrate, mostly per staff request. Here is Kevin’s first piece of the month that went out to staff:

GROUP HUG

Allie knew she was a lesbian when she saw
Angelina Jolie rise up out of the ice in some
film whose title I can never recall. At that
point other students stopped looking at their
phones, smiled and waited for more. It’s a
good thing, she continued, her elementary
school classmates didn’t know she was gay
since they were already picking on her for
being half-Asian and autistic. Her college
classmates chuckle in such a way as to tell
her all that is past, no one in a college class
would ever make fun of an autistic, half-Asian
lesbian. If, as the professor, I told the them,
to line up and give her a hug, Emma, Liam,
Sierra, Joe & others would do so, but since
this is Topics in Literature: Poetry, I tell her,
you’ve got to write a poem about this, but Allie
shrugs and reminds me she’s more interested
in the arcane esoteric minutiae of life in ancient
Rome and hopes to one day speak Latin, so I
encourage her to tell us more; perhaps someone
in this room might write that poem for her.