First Time, No Charm
Fifteen
and the only girl in her class
who hadn’t “done it” yet
Sharp gossipy tongues
of her peers rendered her
brittle, an underachiever
Sure, she had the fever, but
no boy had the charm, the
romance she longed for
Fearing she would develop
a discernible crust beneath which
no one would wish to explore
she began to wear shorter skirts,
willowy legs bending, swaying
as a breeze blew through her branches
She spied one guy, gave him the eye
that said, “I want,” and he knew he’d be
Her First, and thus accoladed by his buds
That night, they threw down a blanket
Some pot he’d rustled up for the occasion
dilated their pupils, lazy balloon eyes
A few harsh kisses, some fumbling
some mumbling, but not calling her name
He opened the packet of the sheik sheath
Almost exploding as she put it on him
(like the banana in health class) and then he
crushed her with his weight, piercing her
It was all of ten minutes, leaving her with
the wound that never needs mending
And an unbearable feeling that there must be
more than sex than this, a barbarian invasion
Otherwise, why would musicians bother to write
love songs?
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For The Sunday Whirl: Sheaths, Explode, Unbearable, Fever, Willows, Crust, Mending, Breeze, Piercing, Brittle, and Rustle. Click on the blog name and see what everyone else got from this interesting group on the Wordle! I am glad to say this is NOT autobiographical.
I’ve chosen this poem for dverse Open Mic Night. Also at my home base for all things poetic, Poets United.
The Big Change
How to explain the changes ahead of me.
First, Mom needed gin, just a snort
to abort the mortification of
the dreaded subject at hand: Sex.
On a page in her steno notebook,
she drew crude diagrams:
Ovaries, tubes, uterus – utilitarian scrawls,
later to be thrown away in disgust.
“The egg starts in here,” pen on ovary,
“travels down through here,”
tracing Fallopian Lane,
“and ends up here. Once a month.”
Another jigger of gin for courage.
“If the egg gets fertilized, it stays here
and becomes a baby. If not,”
siiiiiiigh, “you bleed and need some equipment.”
She pulled out the mysterious
blue box, used heretofore only by
Mom and my big sisters. Removing
napkin and belt, she trussed me up.
That was the extent of Sex Ed with Mom:
There were eggs (aren’t eggs big?).
There were tubes and a place
you might make a baby (is fertilization about peat moss?)
Later I found out the good stuff…
recalling Mae West’s immortal wisdom:
“No man ever loved me
the way I love myself!”
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Poetic Bloomings, a new site – check it out! Theirbeing Change. Also at Poets United, the poetry collective.
Sharp Little Pencil 