by Pat Brisson
“It’s called poetic license,
isn’t it, Ms. Butler?”
“A license to break the rules?”
asks Kevin.
“I gotta get me one of those.”
He leans my way and whispers,
“What about you, Molly?”
“Well,” I whisper back,
with a boldness I don’t quite feel,
“if rules are made to be broken,
I guess I’ll break a few.”
First Move
I’m tired of waiting for Grady to make a move,
so I ask him for his e-mail,
and he says he doesn’t have a computer.
I ask him for his phone number.
He says, “Hey, look at that!”
I look to where he’s pointing,
then back, and I catch him stealing my fries
and grinning.
I ask him where he lives.
He says, “In a house.”
I ask him what he does after school.
He says, “Not much.”
I ask him if he has a job.
He says, “Not really.”
And when I think I can’t take
this man-of-mystery routine another minute,
he grins and asks,
“Wanna do something after school?”
and before I can answer, adds,
“I’ll meet you by the tennis courts at three.”
WWVD?
I have to get through
three brain-numbing classes
till dismissal finally comes.
And the biggest question on my mind after
Where will we go?
Will we have enough to talk about?
and What is he expecting of me?
is
What would Valerie do?
’cause I’m pretty sure she’d do more
than I’m ready for, and I’m also sure
she made that crystal clear to Grady.
So if he wants what she can offer,
and he didn’t take her up on it,
then he must prefer what he sees in me.
And if so, I wish I knew what it was,
so I could concentrate on doing
more of that.
Body, Don’t Fail Me Now
Three classes.
I can do this.
But oh,
my heart is running ahead of me
down the hall, doing
somersaults and backflips.
And there goes my stomach,
like a badly shot basketball,
bounce-bounce-bouncing
along behind it.
My lungs,
usually so reliable,
have gone off somewhere
in search of air,
leaving me behind gasping,
drowning in my own happiness.
I can get through three more classes.
I know I can,
if only my vital organs
will cooperate.
Fooling Around with Words When I Couldn’t Care Less About What’s Going on in Science Class
First class,
class act,
tough act to follow,
follow your heart,
heart of stone,
stone’s throw,
throw it all away,
a way with words,
word to the wise,
wise up,
up against it,
it just goes to show you,
you never know.
The Second Class
I appear to be taking notes.
My pen moves steadily
across the page;
my eyes go from notebook
to teacher
and back again.
My head nods at
appropriate moments
as Mr. Healy,
with his green-and-blue-striped tie
held to his shirt by a tie clip
of a bowling ball and pins
goes on
and on about
some election
or peace treaty
or other Important Historical Event.
Important to someone, maybe,
but not me,
not today,
as I furiously note
how many minutes of my life
I have to get through here
before my real life—
the one with Grady—
can begin again.
Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen . . .
Look up,
pretend to listen,
nod . . .
Twelve, eleven, ten . . .
Look up,
pretend to listen,
nod . . .
Three, two, one!
I sigh with relief as the bell rings.
One more to go.
The Last Class
One long, monotonous lecture
Sixteen throat-clearings
Four yawns
Seven coughs
Two sneezes
One nose-blowing
Three dropped books
Two dropped pencils
Thirty-two ums
One thinly disguised fart
Fifteen seconds of barely stifled laughter
Four pages ripped from notebooks
Eight whispered messages
One ringing bell
Twenty-five pairs of stampeding feet
Freedom!
The Courts
I’m expecting him to be there,
smiling, waiting,
happy to see me.
But when I come around the bend
by the field house,
it’s just me and the empty tennis courts.
I reach out to the chain-link fence,
slip my fingers through,
and hang on,
wishing there were a match
I could pretend to watch,
instead of standing here lost, alone,
wondering if he’s played me for a fool,
when I hear him say,
“Sorry. I got held up.
You been waiting long?”
And
only my whole life
flies across my brain
and makes me smile
because now everything is
Perfect.
So Easy
He slips his arm around my waist
as if he’s done it a thousand times before.
(Of course, he has,
in my imagination,
but he doesn’t know that, does he?)
Is this really me—
my thumb hooked through the belt loop
of his jeans,
my hip bumping his as we walk?
(And does my skin really send off sparks
where he touches me?
And have my feet even once met the ground?)
Amnesia
We walk—
around the tennis courts,
past the soccer field,
behind the baseball bleachers—
but everywhere we go
guys find him.
Again and again he says,
“Wait a sec, okay?”
and goes off
a little ways ahead.
They talk a bit—
heads tilted toward each other,
eyes squinting in the sun—
slap backs,
shake hands,
like old men doing business,
and then he hurries back
(to me!).
And even though
I feel—well, awkwardly abandoned
for those minutes,
his coming-back-again,
a smile meant just for me upon his face,
makes me almost forget
he ever went away.
Drenched
His kisses, like the rain, start slowly.
I feel them soft upon my head,
each one
a diamo
nd dropped onto my hair.
And then the shower builds:
kiss upon kiss
along my cheeks,
my throat,
my eyes,
till, more determinedly,
the tempest mounts,
and I kiss back,
caught in a whirlwind
where there is nothing
but this
blinding storm of kisses;
wet and dizzying
kisses;
crackling, thundering
kisses;
bruising, powerful
kisses;
kisses, kisses
that leave me
breathless.
Sweeter Than Kisses
More than I want to feel his
day-old beard scratch my face,
and feel his lips nibbling mine,
and feel his hands cradling my head
or sliding up and down my back and arms,
and feel his body pressed against me,
and taste his minty-breath kiss after glorious kiss,
and listen to his breathing in my ear
when he comes up for air,
more than all that—
kiss-blissful paradise though it is—
what I really want
is for someone to see me now,
hip to hip with Grady,
and report it all back
to Valerie Turdo,
till her heart slowly slides to her knees.
Carrying My Books Home After Kissing Grady
I hold and press them tightly to my chest
in place of him, whose hugging I’d prefer.
The air is sharply spiced with fallen leaves
and prickles with a rain that’s still to come.
I breathe and sigh and
smile and breathe again,
transformed from who I was to who I am.
And soon the books,
Biology Today and
Math for Changing Times,
grow heavy in my arms.
There’s little they could ever teach me now.
One afternoon of kissing Grady Dillon
has taught me all I ever want to know.
I Can’t Even E-mail Barb
I try,
but the words
come out all wrong.
I only want to be alone
and hug myself
and smile
and smile
and smile,
remembering.
The Day After Kissing Grady
The next day school is buzzing.
I think the entire field hockey team
must have seen us yesterday.
I feel the stares from older girls
who never stared before
and hear the hum of conversations
slowing to a pause as I walk by.
I feel so hot!
Today I’m dressed in spandex bits
just big enough to guarantee
the dress code stays unbroken.
But Valerie is nowhere to be seen,
and lunch with Grady’s over
way too soon.
No talk from him today of after school.
No mention that he’ll call me up tonight,
though I taped my number
to his bag of chips at lunch.
My dreams collapse around me as lunch ends—
a balloon with not enough hot air
to lift it to the sky.
English Assignment: Write a Poem in a Style Not Your Own, e.g., Shakespeare, the Bible, Emily Dickinson, Dr. Seuss
A reading from the Book of Misery,
chapter 1, verses 1-9:
That boy is ever in my thoughts;
his taste lingers on my lips.
He has destroyed my defenses;
my hesitancy he has brushed away.
With his face and his voice he has destroyed them,
and with his kisses he has secured my confidence.
At eventide I basked in the memory of our time together;
at dawn I glowed with the pleasure of what would come.
But now my dreams vanish like the rainbow;
my hope,
like a pool with no spring to feed it,
evaporates in the heat of the day:
I am miserable in my dejection,
and black is the mood that overwhelms me,
for I had plans of glory
and they are unfulfilled,
plans of intimacy
and they are swept away.
Losing
One week in seventh grade I lost
the fifty-meter dash to Shelly Burdock,
the spelling bee to Marianna Kline, and
my favorite purple sweater at the mall.
“Get over it,” I told myself.
“Pretend it doesn’t matter.”
But it did.
I thought,
If only I could lose without it hurting,
and wondered
if this was, maybe, something I could learn.
So I started
losing things on purpose,
just little stuff at first:
a pen left in the library,
some notes in study hall.
Then bigger things:
a favorite book,
a great CD,
an old beloved sweatshirt.
I tried hard not to care, but
each new loss echoed
bigger losses in my life—
my father before I even knew him,
my mother, when I was still so young.
So now the thought of losing Grady
is unthinkable.
I cannot,
I will not lose again.
Decisions
How far am I willing to go?
How do I get him to choose?
How do I keep his attention?
How much am I willing to lose?
Hello, Barbara? Are You There?
I call her, but
Barbara is no use at all,
stuck as she is on
her one-legged boyfriend, Chad.
Everything I say brings her back to him.
“Chad says . . .”
“Chad thinks . . .”
“Chad wants . . .”
“Where are you in all this?”
I cry at last.
(But what I really mean is,
Where am I?)
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“All I’m hearing is Chad.
Where’s Barbara?”
“Still here, Moll, only happier.
Be glad for me, okay?
I didn’t know before what I was missing.”
“Sure,” I mumble
miserably,
“I will,” and I want to mean it, but
her happiness is not a mirror
I can see myself in now.
Proposition
Two days since Grady’s kisses
and I’m hungry.
At lunch,
Valerie beats me to the seat
next to him,
and I almost do my usual Polite Girl thing
and slink silently away,
but the scent of perfume
rising from my breasts reminds me
I am not a Polite Girl anymore.
How far am I willing to go?
On Thursday, October 15, at 12:08 p.m.,
I know the answer:
all the way.
I call his name
and wait for his eyes,
then saunter over,
the bag of corn chips I’d brought for him
dangling from my fingertips.
I slide myself between their chairs,
lean in close enough to lick his ear, and whisper,
“I brought you something special today.”
He shivers slightly from the heat of my words.
“Corn chips?” he asks.
&nbs
p; “Better than corn chips,” I tell him.
“An after-school surprise.
Interested?”
And, of course,
he is.
I hear Valerie’s voice as I walk away,
higher, almost desperate,
but I know that Grady’s eyes
are on me.
Thoughts That Afternoon: Definitely Maybe
This is just what I wanted.
I think it’s
so spectacular how
everything is falling into place.
It shows the power
of a well-worked plan.
Oh, man!
This is just what I wanted!
I think I’m
ready to take the plunge
at last,
break away from my
Good Girl past,
and learn to dance at
a thousand miles an hour.
I’ll kiss the sky
in ecstasy
and feel the hot, sweet breath
of the stars.
It’s almost time.
I can hardly wait.
This is just what I wanted.
I think.
Hesitation
Chocolate or strawberry?
Purple or pink?
Grow it or cut it?
Each day the answer’s different.
So how can I be sure
about this
when I’m so unsure about
so many other things?
Do I really know what I’m doing?
Does anyone?
Her Virginity Speaks
Molly,
this is your virginity speaking.
Look, I don’t want to pull some
I’ve-been-with-you-all-these-years-
and-I-can’t-believe-you’re-going-to-
throw-me-away-like-that
routine.
I know how lightly girls treat
their virginity these days,
as if it’s some kind of nuisance to be dropped off
at Goodwill with outgrown jeans and sweaters and
last year’s handbags.
I’m not totally unrealistic,
but I want our parting to mean something.
I remember, even if you don’t,
your first tooth,
first step,
first day in Big Girl underpants,
how everyone cheered and celebrated.
They were milestones,
and they meant something.
Well, damn it,
this is a milestone, too,
and it deserves recognition.
I’m not some old aunt who’s outstayed her welcome,