Academic Wall Art

34 creative works found

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  porv and susan's academic bowl
  by piffpictures

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  Another year is over
  by Yerzat

  Another academic year is over. Dunno wether to be sad or happy :)

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  this year for me
  by Yerzat

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  The Underbelly
  by evycole

  The Underbelly by Evelyn Cole CHAPTER ONE Trishita McCabe stepped over the man sleeping on the sidewalk in front of Russo’s Bar and Grille. A pile of rags smelling of paint thinner under the guy’s head caught her attention—Clark University T-shirts. The sight of those shirts unlocked her longings as she unlocked the door to Russo’s. She began cleaning the place with a vengeance. / That damn paint contractor used Clark T-shirts as rags when she would give anything to be able to wear a new one. That thought struck her irony-bone for she was the illegitimate child of Dr. McCabe, an exchange professor from Scotland for only one semester. He knew naught of her. Nor did she know his academic field, for Flossie, her mother, had not asked. This particular unknown skewered Trishita’s academic fantasies. / Just before noon the cook and dishwasher came in the back door chattering in Spanish. Russo stuck his head in the front door and said, “I’ll be at the track. Looks good, Trish. Don’t let the assholes get you down.” / By noon the place was full with hung-over guys at the long bar overlooking Beacon Street through the dirty window, a few law students and some older bitches at the tables. Regulars at the bar called her “The Red Amazon” behind her back, “Trishita” to her face. Newcomers always asked how tall she was. At that question she pointed to a hand-lettered sign over the bar that read, “six foot, one inch” in red ink. Men in suits spoke in hushed tones about having those long legs wrapped around them. / University women called her, “Miss.” / “Miss, would you please turn down that hideous music.” / “Miss, I don’t believe this fork is clean. Please bring another.” / “Where do you buy your clothes?” one asked today as Trishita set a steaming plate of beans and rice on the table, / Trishita ignored her. / “Who does your hair?” another woman with straight blonde hair asked. “Do you have it tinted red and then permed?” The others smiled behind their napkins. / She hated them but continued to wait on them. / By four in the afternoon the place emptied except for a couple at the bar. Trishita stretched her legs across a booth and picked up “The Grapes of Wrath,” for a few minutes of reading about a life worse than hers, but not much worse. There’s supposed to be progress, she thought. These poor jerks sleeping on the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts, a city that brags about being home to ten fine colleges, are no better off than those Okies in California during the depression. And that was seventy years ago, at least. / Sharp claps of thunder outbid the police siren that wailed down Beacon Street and stopped at Russo’s Bar and Grille, interrupting Trishita’s reading. Pellets of hail stuck to the jackets of the policeman who strode in. Trishita looked up from her book. / “To what do we owe the honor of your visit?” she asked / “We’re looking for a Miss, a Ms. Patricia McCabe.” / Trishita stood, wary. “Yours truly. What do you want?” / The officer, no taller than five-seven, tilted his head to examine her face, thereby avoiding her breasts which she knew confronted him. “Is Florence Giraux your mother?” / “Yes sir.” / “I need to take you in for questioning.” / Rage burned its way up Trishita’s torso, exploding in her throat. She swallowed hard, stifling it. / “What did she do this time?” she asked. / “Painted what looked like tulips all over the inside of the city hall bell tower,” the officer said, lowering his head as if to hide his smile. / “Why do you need me?” Trishita asked. / “She said you hatched the plot,” he said. / “I did not. I have nothing to do with her shenanigans.” / “You’d better come along easy like,” the officer said with a stifled giggle. / Trishita hung up her apron, called for the cook to replace her, and followed the officer out to the patrol car. It was a familiar scene. / Flossie came toward her from a hallway in the station wearing a torn red and yellow pantsuit and a wobbly grin on her face. / “Thanks, Mija.” She hugged Trishita, her head hitting Trishita’s breast hard. / Don’t suck me dry, Trishita thought, and turned to the desk to pay Flossie’s bail. / “Why, Ma?” She asked as they left the station. / “It seemed like such a good idea,” Flossie said, “I knew it had to be yours.” / Trishita just shook her head and walked her mother home, wanting the storm to whip them with icy rocks. But, like Trishita, it was spent. / Together, they climbed the three flights of stairs of the old tenement building to their flat. Trishita’s long legs skipped every other stair while Flossie scampered beside her like a child. / When she ushered Flossie inside, she looked at the only home she’d ever known as if she were a rental agent surveying the opposite of anyplace she would want to represent. The kitchen connected to all the other rooms in the flat and was the heart of a web of rooms. It had windows on the north side only and was big enough to feed a crowd. Of course, the normal feast consisted of hot dogs on Wonder Bread rolls with a squirt of French’s mustard. The plaid sofa, on which Trishita was born, filled the south wall. And then, when she was only nine, she had to be midwife for the birth of her half-brother Robert on than sofa, and then, three years later, Johnny. The baby girl Flossie had in between she had in the hospital and gave up for adoption. / Trishita retreated to her imagined role. Opposite the sofa, under the window, was a picnic table and benches. A refrigerator with legs stood between the table and a porcelain, rust-stained sink. The refrigerator was as old as the tenement, probably lifted into the kitchen as it was being built by that particular wave of immigrants. / She remembered a program on public radio about those waves that came to Beacon Street and surroundings. Since the sixteen hundreds, immigrants have clung to Worcester’s center, then, gaining power, fanned out, thus making way for more. First were the Pilgrims followed by all manner of English and Scots. After the potato famine the Irish came. These were followed by Italians, Swedes, some few Lithuanians, and Poles. The most recent are the Puerto Ricans. Consequently, some of Worcester’s finest ivy-covered universities are surrounded by slums. Yeah, drunks sleeping on stinky Clark T-shirts. / Although her room connected to Flossie’s through the bathroom, it had a blessed fire escape out one window. Now was the time to escape all the way. / Back in the kitchen she heated the stew she’d made that morning. “You need your vegetables, Ma. Sit down.” / “If you say so, Mija,” Flossie said. / “Ma, I’m job hunting.” Trishita dished up some stew and handed it to her mother. “Got leads on some live-in housekeeping jobs. Soon as I land one, I’m moving out.” / “No! Why Mija? Why would you do a thing like that?” / “Why do you keep calling me Mija?” Trishita asked. “You’re French, for Christ’s sake.” / “Sounds good around here.” Flossie’s eyes filled. “Why’re you moving?” / “Ma, I’‘m almost twenty-six,” Trishita said, lowering her voice. “Last month, when Johnny’s Dad came and took him to California, I decided to get on with my own plans. Don’t you think it’s time?” / “Time for what?” Flossie asked. “What you need I can’t give you? Besides a man. Them you can have whenever.” / Trishita placed her hands on her mother’s thin shoulders as if to make her words penetrate Flossie’s consciousness. / “I want to learn how to drive a car, Ma, to use computers properly, to work in a downtown office. I really want to go to college someday. Shit, I could pay a semester’s tuition on what I spend bailing you out.” / “Ha! You spend lots more on books,” Flossie said. “You need to go to high school first, you know.” / “I did. When you weren’t looking. Took a test.” Trishita took a bite of the stew, then added some dill. / “But you get nothing as a live-in,” Flossie said. / “Not money, I guess, but I’ll learn all kinds of things I need to know to get outa Russo’s.” Trishita pulled at a lock of her hair, straightening it. “I need to stop taking care of you, start taking care of myself.” / Flossie’s head snapped to the right as if Trishita had slapped her. “You don’t take care of me. I take care of you. Always have.” / “Yeah, Ma, I know.” She picked up the classified section of the Telegram and stared at each circled name. / The next morning she managed to use the computer at the Worcester Library, at least the word processing part, to forge three letters of recommendation from fictitious employers, varying the writing styles for each. She wanted out of her mother’s life. Out of waiting table for drunken Puerto Ricans making passes, listening to loud rapping blacks accuse her of racism every time she blocked her ears at them, and away from the whine of testy little Orthodox Jews complaining about the size of the matzo balls in the soup. Once she’d yelled at a customer, “Then put your own balls in it.” Even Flossie looked shocked. / Trishita smiled at the memory; sealed and stamped the envelopes. Which elegant family, if any, would believe her false references and hire her without checking them?

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  Amaryllis
  by Jonicool

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  Lily of the Nile
  by Jonicool

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  vca philosophy on education
  by Laura Owsianka

  when answering question 5, please respond as though the word “academic” had been replaced by the word “artistic”. oh please.

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  Academic Learning Center for Purdue Calumet
  by Sami Mick

  Where I go to school :)

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  Academic
  by lloyddodd

  A student attending a conference at the University of Aberdeen, July 2009

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  Now What?
  by KAHH