BA in Discovery

“BA in Discovery”

I should be the last to complain
about a spelling error.

I have a lot of trouble with words,
they don’t sound right on the page
or skipping off my tongue.

Words are difficult. I have a master’s
in words, as if a degree could make up
for the number of spelling and replacement
errors that can be found in my early drafts, and even
in some of my completed works.

I’m a facility member now. I must hold myself
to a higher standard for my student’s sake, but
I have trouble on the fly, at the white board I miss
spell words that my students tell me a fourth grader
would know.

When I teach irony to my students, I use myself
as an example. Chastised and humiliated at a young age
about my speech, my writing, and above all else,
my spelling. Now, I have three degrees in English:

BA, Creative Writing
BA, Rhetoric & Discourse
MFA, Writing

So, when I see, for the first time, my name
in a college graduation program, under which
are listed my degrees, a smile quickly recedes
to a frown of frustration.

It seems that I did not major in ‘Rhetoric & Discourse’
but something called, ‘Rhetoric & Discovery.’

I wanted to mail copies of the program to my parents,
my college and graduate school professors. That dream
was dashed upon someone else’s carelessness, a carelessness
I know all to well, a carelessness that I fully understand, but

don’t.