The C paper

It was her best work by far.
Covered like a casserole she’d cradled it to class,

handing it like a tribute into his soft white hands
tendered well before deadline

she’d used a thesaurus and words like solipsism
disenfranchised and hubris

run it through with a Grammarly
free trial version, Chicago style

formatted and cited.
Hardly touched, a couple of red crosses

and slashes where he’d nibbled at the
edges of the first and final paragraphs,

a couple of checkmarks like crumbs
along the middle margins.

It looked like a face- a round little head,
the mouth gaping open in surprise:

another perfect C.

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LC Gutierrez is a product of many places in the South and the Caribbean, as well as writing and comparative literature programs at LSU and Tulane University (PhD). An erstwhile academic, he now writes, translates, edits, and plays trombone in Madrid, Spain.