The poem is a play on the first stanza of Wallace Steven’s poem, “Sunday Morning.” In that poem, the subject reflects on much bigger things such as religion and the meaning of life. I guess the joke is that on Monday you start thinking about your grades again. Either way, orange peels and cockatoos make people think of the larger context in which they reside. For my part, on Sunday I see fear in a handful of dust; on monday, I see Fannie Mae.

Sunday Morning

by Wallace Stevens

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug, mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

On a more substantive level—why might orange peels make one think of her complacent peers uninterested in pulling As? Is this some quirky, private mental association completely inaccessible to an outsider like me, or is there something more? I can well imagine the thought of the mark she might receive might prompt some musings on her slacker classmates, but orange peels make me think of tea—which reinforces my own complacency, as it happens, so I think I’m going to go get me some. Ah, complacency.

As it happens, I listened to “Tuesday Morning” by the Pogues and “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” by the Cowboy Junkies right before I read this post. For what it’s worth, I recommend both highly.