John Skoyles
Philosophy 101

Blind Professor Hatch set the class 

on edge each time he smoked.  

Waving a lit match just under

his eye, he expertly applied 

the flame to the tip.  

After a strenuous test, 

ten frat boys turned their backs 

and dropped trou, mooning 

the philosopher as he explained

Plato’s cave, that the net of shadows 

seen by the chained prisoners 

is the closest to reality they’d ever get.

 
Found In Volume 44, No. 01
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John Skoyles
About the Author

John Skoyles is the author of four books of poems, A Little Faith; Permanent Change; Definition of the Soul and The Situation, all from Carnegie-Mellon University Press which will publish his New & Selected Poems in 2016.  He is also the author of a book of personal essays, Generous Strangers; a memoir, Secret Frequencies: A New York Education; and the recently published A Moveable Famine: A Life in Poetry.  He teaches at Emerson College and is the poetry editor of Ploughshares.