Pam Bridgeman
Teaching Conrad
All those years of dry learning:
Austen, Eliot, Pope
swept away by your brown arm
leaning across my desk.
I watched you through glass,
waited to bicycle past
you at the bus stop
for that wave of acknowledgement.
I studied the shape of your thighs,
the vulnerable, unbuttoned throat.
The visual beauty
as Lawrence would say.
I could hardly bear to look at you.
Do you remember the day
I brought in a great armful of irises?
And Hardy’s ballads,
the rhythm of ring-a-ring-a-roses?
Just to hold your hand.
They all knew.
Yes, I got you
quite deliberately drunk,
coaxed you to
an artful seduction.
And if I’m as honest
as the look you gave me
as you retreated
down that corridor,
Kurtz had the last word.
Page(s) 33
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