Professor Superstar Turns 65
Today is your 65th birthday.
Your status is ever so clear.
Your colleagues have set up a tribute
Extolling your shining career.
They bask in the secondhand honor
That flows from their honoring you.
They thrill to the visiting speakers,
Who radiate eminence too.
“Society’s far too unequal,”
Your colleagues are prone to lament.
But strictly within their profession,
They worship the top one percent.
“Professor Superstar Turns 65” first appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Dessert is Counted Sweetest
after Emily Dickinson’s “Success”
Dessert is counted sweetest
By those who need to diet.
When doctors won’t stop nagging,
I fantasize a riot.
Not one of all the cakes and pies
I might forgo today
Could fail to bring me pleasure–
Though later, much dismay.
“Dessert is Counted Sweetest” first appeared in The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin.
Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 250 poems published in a wide range of places, including sixteen in past issues of Sparks of Calliope.
Sparks of Calliope 
She’s just great!
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