Michael Cluff is a full-time English instructor at Riverside Community College in Norco, California about fifty miles southeast of Los Angeles. 
He is also a part-time actor and director. His work has recently been featured in Rattlesnake ( Sacramento,Ca.) , Poetry Superhighway (Los Angeles) , 
and Dissident Editions from Northern Ireland where his Iraq Monologues were featured in November 2006. 
In February 2007, he will assistant direct and psoobily act in King of Sticks, a one act play having its West Coast (USA) debut.



 

Tension



 Hiding beneath
 a blue sharkskin
 suit
 double-breasted
 and white briefs
 is a hairy beast,



 the real me.



 Waiting to pop out
 touch my red with brown and
 blue diamonded tie
 and then



 yanked it off
 throw it
 or me
 down on the couch
 to yowl,
 gyrate
 and then growl.



 It would not happen
 now


 too much work
 teaching
 to do.



 The glean
 and gleam
 of my black white-tip shoes
 irritates me
 yet



 unendingly



 and the belt,
 a perfect weave
 of leather and brace,
 buckle
 becomes too encircling,
 tensing,
 encompassing
 constricting



 tight



 as the morning,
 paper grading,
 she,
 progress reports,
 he
 passes me by.