Robbie Forsyth studies literature at Cal State San Marcos.

Literature 309B, Modern to Multicultural American Literature

• In the upper division Lit classes
• there’s a loose interpretation of truth.
• The instructor faintly prompts discussion
• and each student speaks, one at a time, as
• in a bookish courtroom, kids on trial.
• It reminds me of the halfway houses,
• rehabs, and camps for dangerous children;
• those helpless counselors, faintly prompting,
• and teenage junkies, just off heroin
• pitching lofty love advice to young drunks.
• Some lying, some too smart for their own good,
• in for a wash and a certificate
• as if it makes life easier out there.
• Some dying, desperate enough to pray.

Passing the Fitting Room

• A woman is pulling jeans up white thighs.
• They are too tight and she is bent
• squishing the dough of her legs into unforgiving denim.
• Tired breasts toss and heave in her shirt and
• a bright thong invades her furry behind
• like a snake strangling a fat bird.

• Craters and veins, patches of blue and yellow and purple
• painted on the wide canvas.
• As she slowly tips over, an impossible color of
• dyed red hair covers her face upside down.

• Her son, by the open door, wonders why.

New Years Eve

• The adults are drunk and
• acting like children

• and the kids are drunk,
• acting like adults

• acting like children.

Robbie Forsyth is the son of a grocery clerk and a third-grade teacher. He studies literature at Cal State San Marcos.