editing

Red ink spiders across the page,

slashing out words, underscoring sentences 

that don't make sense. 

Script jagged from frustration

spells out the problems:

"Is that your thesis?" 

"Is that?"

"I’m confused-- the only claim you make

is that people don’t care about history classes

but it’s vaguely worded;

is that your thesis?" 

And later in the body paragraphs-- more like

hide the body, because you murdered

the English language-- more ink.

"Cliche." 

"Do you mean "poignant?" "

"That is a run-on sentence AND

a sentence fragment both at once. How?" 

and of course:

"Citation needed."

"Cite this" 

“THAT’S A QUOTE CITE IT”

"For the love of--

you have one footnote in this whole paper!" 

Go back and re-read it ,

this time for content again, 

this time focus on what is there, not 

what is missing.

"No, some states do have standardized

testing for history, 

I had it for ten years."

"What do you mean people in California 

don’t learn about civil rights?!?" 

"Actually not everyone discovers themselves

in high school, 

or learns what they want to stand for. "

"That is an opinion right there, don’t present it as fact. 

At least cite it." 

The paper is bleeding with edits now, 

gashed, scored, and annotated 

in two inch margins. 

On the final page

(note: no bibliography)

the harsh corrections stand out 

against the pale blue text copied 

from wikipedia.

"Wait, was that the thesis?"