In my second year I took a Law and Literature class to give myself some sort of relief from the typical law school class and to coddle my much neglected theater minor self a little. It was a good choice: my professor was dedicated and full of interesting legal references in popular culture and had the movies to prove it. Our final was a take home and one of the options was to write a blawg post. It was a fantastic class.
Usually every class handout was thoroughly discussed and picked apart, as literature classes are known for doing. But the day we were given this poem, not another word was spoken about it. I filed it away and didn’t look at it again until the end of the semester. When I did, I understood why there was no lengthy class discussion or dissection led by the professor. She understood the poem and knew we would too.
Its simple really. And I think it has a strong propensity for hitting home.
Who hasn’t teased the air with their sighs and burned a few holes with bedroom eyes all in the name of being who you’re supposed to be?
Lawyers on the Left Bank
– Rachel Wetzsteon
So this is me at thirty-two, the strange dream seemed to say:
the lawyers order coffee in a louche Left Bank cafe
and read their menus carefully, and sit extremely still
while all around them lips kiss, fistfights rage, and glasses spill.
What they are doing in this rowdy tavern is not clear.
It’s obvious they are not prudes, for after all they’re here.
But in this topsy-turvy room where tables serve as beds
and tarts are jumping out of cakes, what thoughts race through their heads?
Perhaps they harbor fantasies of trading in their suits
for clingy leather bodices and sleek stiletto boots;
perhaps they scan the revelry and contemplate a fate
where working hard is not the solemn foe of playing late;
or maybe they just tease the air with legions of small sighs
and burn holes in the carpet with averted bedroom eyes.
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