Fighting Off the Girls
Let me say this happened only once,
some time after our sex education -
that stiff talk and slide-show in the dark,
our eyes widening with vocabulary -
when I came out blinking and converted
to spend the next two weeks at home
pleading with my parents
not to ask me to ask them any questions.
I used to catch myself watching them doing the garden,
shocked at myself, imagining them
naked, hairy and, worst of all,
cheerful, wiggling the seedlings into the earth.
Night after night, I saw myself - closing my eyes
and kissing the mirror. Girls. One by one,
I would kiss them and wonder, tracing the creases
and curves. If only I’d let myself let them …
That summer, the school field seemed bigger than ever.
I knew they’d be waiting;
I had studied their movements.
I knew that at least five or six of them loved me.
That’s why I thought I’d play along, so that
when they caught me, I would simply pretend
that it hurt; pretend, that is, till they panted and triumphed
above me, crushing me, making me panic -
what would they do to me, which of the diagrams?
Only after the bell did I find myself
slowly getting to my feet,
rubbing at the grass stains.
Page(s) 10
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The