Saturday, February 7, 2015

Jennifer Lagier- Three Poems & Photos





Small Game Collector

I was the hunter,
tracker of totems,
stalked jackrabbits
through Johnson grass thickets.
Along ditch banks, I turned
chunks of cement, seized
gliding commas of garter snakes,
blue-bellied lizards.
My fingers snatched
nervous swallowtails
from carnival clumps
of blooming lantana.
I enclosed each savage pulse
in the net of my acquisitive hand,
patrolled childhood's frontiers
to drag home the untamed.





Hometown Reunion

“Land of Peaches and Cream”
the familiar billboard
next door to a taxidermist’s shop reads.
A failing fruitstand
displays softening mounds
of hollow cored melons.
Here churches outnumber
gas pumps and grocery stores
by a two to one margin.
Driving by Bender’s Bakery,
I still taste those
tough-skinned ice cream cones.
Cruising the concrete shores
of a fading Bud’s Frosty, I discover
a balding high school alumnus.
He clutches a beer can,
just like the 60’s,
irremovably rooted.
Puppet strings from our canal bank past
wave my jerking hand
in embarrassed remembrance.
I roll past the city limits of guilt,
return to my great expectations’
tragic innocence.




Small Town Sex Education

It was the summer
high school boys bloomed
with octopus hands,
inescapable tongues,
atomic erections.
We compared contraceptive folklore
at slumber parties,
girls with awakening hormones
in shortie pajamas.
I learned how to smoke
filterless Pall Malls,
rat my hair,
kill militant semen.
Virginity seized me
in one vengeful claw,
whispered horror stories
of unwanted pregnancy
into my ear
using nun's voices.
I got tired of wrestling fingers
out of my panties, went on a
private hunger strike
against sexual freedom.
Punished appetite with hours of leg lifts,
solo runs around my dad's orchard.
Pinned baggy skirts as they fell
from my waist to the
tails of my empty-tent blouses.
Watched myself shrink
back to the safety
of flat-chested childhood.

1 comment:

  1. an alive feeling of the times done honestly that works....

    Ray Foreman

    ReplyDelete