Saturday, December 02, 2006

Puberty by Jill James (poet laureate of New Jersey)

the Hungarian girl
still haunts me

first
she was ice skating
upside down on the sky
holding a pointy paper airplane cup
up like a hat to her pigtails

I considered her the prettiest
and the cutest boy in corderoy
thought she was sex-eeeee

but yes (you may have already guessed)
the father was
very strict

& something happened
something disgusting

like a rat chewing through the sun

maybe her pants were too tight
or maybe the lawless look in her eye

cause then
her lights went out
her flight got cancelled
she started to play the wrong notes
on the recorder and trip
on her rainbow shoestrings in the hallways

we had to leave her there
stumbling through her Tchaikovsky routine

losing the music

we were in a rush
and none of us
not one of us knew what to do

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