Othello (Moor), Iago (scorned)
go at it in a Turkish war
but poor Othello doesn’t know
Iago’s out to get him so

The dreams
webbed and flapping, with beaks like orange shoehorns,
suffuse my head;

Week 1 – The Matrix

One thing my EATR students have over the 19-year-olds I used to teach: attention span. I flipped the lights on after the movie and all 400 of them were alert, humming softly, their eyes glowing red with what I’m told is attention.

I began with what I thought was a softball question: “What did the robots do wrong in this film?”

“The thing is,” I said, “I’m pretty sure I’m overreacting.”

“Maybe,” said the mailman.

“No, but really,” I said. “Like, I’m almost certain that I’m overreacting.”

When the monkeys showed up at my door with a card that read, “An infinite amount of monkeys—For Dean,” my brain spun in my head like a rotisserie chicken. If there was such a thing as an infinite amount of monkeys, then every home, dance club, nursing home, pizza joint, ocean and planetoid would be filled with monkeys. In fact, logically, the monkeys should inhabit the very spot where I stood. I grabbed the card, worried that the infinite monkeys would rapidly deplete our resources and their decaying carcasses would litter our streets.