After Katrina

by Catharine Savage Brosman

 

The CEO (now tyrant) of Tulane
pretends to suffer post-Katrina pain;
but what a chance he has: "I rule, I reign!"
his motto now. Against the well-known grain
of deans and heads, whose wont is to maintain
all programs, even weak, in their domain,
he's canceled many, good, bad, and inane-
four useful ones in engineering, slain
(which means the sats will shortly wane),
and weak humanities degrees that strain
resources-while supporters howl in vain
against such cuts for budgetary gain.
And no one can effectively complain,
or question if the man is even sane.
He's banished colleges, another bane
of potentates, and linked all by a chain
to his authority. He's now the brain
on city panels too, and can constrain
the students to do field work, to obtain
their sheepskin. Witnessing this brave campaign,
made possible by all that wind and rain,
and sure to make his forceful genius plain,
has presidents from Texas up to Maine
now praying for a monster hurricane.

 

© 2006 Catharine Savage Brosman

Catharine Savage Brosman has published five collections of poetry, including Watering (Georgia) and the latest, The Muscled Truce (LSU), as well as two volumes of personal essays, the more recent of which is Finding Higher Ground (University of Nevada Press). A new collection of poems, Range of Light, will appear at LSU Press. Louisiana Literature has published some of her short fiction. Other prose and poems have appeared in the Sewanee Review, Southern Review, South Carolina Review, Critical Quarterly (UK), and Europe (Paris). She lives in New Orleans.