I bring a newspaper to act as talking stick.
The back page stows away a story about
the imaginary future of capitalism
and its artifacts. Photos of oil cans
and fluted orchids graze inside copy.

The question I pose to the students is:
What’s inside your shrine? I pass the stick
around the circle. Deafening silence.
Not since a question on self-identity has such
an iron curtain of reticence taken hold.

The talking stick returns to me as wrinkled
as a shorn Shar-Pei. “Okay,” I acquiesce.
“I’ll add a few relics to mine.” They’re
as familiar as dying embers slumming
in my right ear.

White-walled tires. Queequeg spearing another
noble savage. Apologies squeezed in among
a night of reruns. Snowflakes glued to cobbler.
Stars shaped like parrots. John Yau’s sixth ode
to his desk. Cobwebs hammocked on chandelier.

Next week I’ll bring a genuine relic. One fist-
raising revolutionary. He won’t lecture on greening
the campus or worry the curried yams cooling
outside the Dean’s office. Only the peace. Which
someone enshrined last semester for extra credit.

– Renoir Gaither