Friday poetry challenge: No exit from Escher's stairs

This morning I turned a page in the June 29 issue of The New Yorker and saw myself--my job, my office, my life, plus a handy reply for the colleague who keeps begging me to please please please change my mind about retiring in December. 

It was already a better-than-average issue, featuring Simon Rich's delightful retelling of "The Pied Piper," Amanda Petrusich's gripping exploration of the power of grief, and Julian Lucas's long profile of Colson Whitehead, which made me even more eager to take delivery of his new novel. There's even a short story by Ben Lerner that didn't instantly repulse me--a real accomplishment.

But then in the middle of the not-horrible Lerner story I ran into Chris Gural's cartoon titled "M.C. Escher's Lab Rats" (view it here). Made my day, my week, maybe my year.

I suspect that I'm not the only academic who feels like one of those rats scrambling through an impossible Escher staircase that lures us toward some longed-for apotheosis only to flip us on our heads at the base of yet another set of steps. There's no way out, no way up, no way around, just an endless climb that can't be distinguished from descent, while everyone acts as if the futility is perfectly normal.

Well I need to get out of this rat race. I'm only staying on until December because of health insurance, and then I'm outta here. People keep asking why I want to retire or begging me to stay, which is flattering except I just can't. I could blame the wonky knee that makes standing in front of a class painful and, sometimes, dangerous, or I could blame ever-shifting college policies, enrollment issues, and rampant AI infestation, or I could mention a desire to spend more time with my grandkids while they still like me, but really it comes down to this: I'm tired of living as one of Escher's lab rats, especially when the maze has no end so there's no opportunity to find the cheese.

I don't know what happens when you combine doggerel with ekphrasis, but maybe it's time we found out:

Step up, step down,
go this way round
and through that door
that's on the floor--
up to the attic.
No one is static
but always moves
up well-worn grooves
in stairs that climb
to nowhere. I'm
a rat that wants
to leave the haunts
of Escher's stairs.
But exit--where?

It's not pretty, but if's Friday so it's time to sling some rhymes. Who's next?