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Michelle M. Tokarczyk has published one book of poetry, The House I'm Running From, and is a scholar of working-class studies and coeditor of Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory.
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Published Fall 2006
 
Step Stool
Skimping on grocery money, or even
the church's weekly basket, each year Mom tried
to rummage me a birthday. I hope she didn't know,
but usually she failed. Shrunken Barbie knock-offs,
melting into silly putty if left near heat.
Cracked box games unknown to commercials.
But on my eighth birthday, one year past my age
of reason, I was given a folding stool, compact fitting
under a shoulder, shining in particle board veneer.
My godfather (who liked my sister more and
my mom less) surprise visited. He brought one
of the few games I already owned—Candyland.
Recommended for under age eight. I took out
the stool and demonstrated its many uses
chair, footrest, tv table, writing desk, step stool,
then carried it away to politely play with my sister.
The game was all luck. I had no power to get myself
to the ginger house gumdropped, drip dripping frosting.
But I liked drawing cards of perfectly edged primaries,
waiting for swollen ice cream cones to drip,
making steady serpentine progress toward an end. |
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MR BOOKS
Critics at Work
ed. Jeffrey J. Williams.
Critics at Work offers a guided tour through the central, sometimes confusing and frequently controversial developments in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The tour guides, however, are not distant observers but have been primary participants in those developments, and they report on theory, cultural studies, the literary canon, the recent focus on race, sexuality, and other identities, the state of the univerisity, and the role of the intellectual. Throughout, they consider the not always easy negotiation of politics and culture.
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