Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Sunday, July 2, 2017

Graduate Studies

She kissed me, but she 
did it symbolically,
as part of her final exam with Professor Goodbar,
known far and wide 
for his success with electricity, molasses, and girls who wear glasses. 

She attached a papier-mache head to a wheel, and 
turned a crank;
never did a lump of dailies and glue
express such dumbstruck speechless desire for me.
It came around, leaned in by means of a flexible metal vetebra,
and laid one on me.

Oh the hours
we had spent
deposited across her bed like rag dolls,
discussing emotional boundaries,
primitive impulses among Thai villagers,
and deflecting each other's endearments and tender fumblings.

This is when something went wrong.
Just as my Inner Wanton was awakened
by the kiss of her oscillating manufactured surrogate,
in walked Professor Goodbar and oh,
the smile she gave him.
Oh the sugared data.

There's a limit, you know,
to what a girl can take, 
even in the name of course completion.
I realized I had been a dupe,
a foil,
a representation
of fetish and fantasy, of foolery and fuck-headedness,
trotted out like a show pony with a little engine hidden in its tossing head.

Well.

For months, 
we had learned symbology, transference, 
normal and abnormal expression, data collection and interpretation.
But when I brained the Professor with my darling's papier-mache double,
THAT was real and he fell face first into her lap
like unexpected erratum,
mumbling some other woman's name
and it felt good, yes so good, to walk out of there and become a 

guitar shredder or a softball pitcher instead.  
________

For Play it Again, Toads and Hedgewitch's Get Listed challenge.

 
 

 

10 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh, Shay, this cracked me up. That second stanza started me off and I was howling by the end. The humour is so well-timed and the edge cuts so sweetly.

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  2. so tender. so strong. love to women. we are both and all

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  3. Ha. A lot of fun, if not in the experience! But for the reader. Thanks. k.

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  4. "I realized I had been a dupe,
    a foil,
    a representation
    of fetish and fantasy, of foolery and fuck-headedness,
    trotted out like a show pony with a little engine hidden in its tossing head..."
    One of those moments we all have but only you could nail like this--been there, hated that, but all I could do was grind my teeth and swear(vainly) "never again." This is hilarious, and yet, very real and down to earth in its pastiche of jargon and the dubious intellectual feats and joys of academia intermingled with the all too human vulnerabilities of the heart. Exquisite work.

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  5. So well tuned to the shredding of a guitar...

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  6. I can see the grinning Professor Goodbar, who has the face, in my imagination, of a certain Conservative Prime Minister we had some years back............I enjoyed this read very much, the hours spent talking, the surrogate kiss.....then the falling professor. A girl can take only so much.

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  7. This is so powerful! There's humor.. there's grit.. life lessons and most of all there is this indescribable connection that lures the reader into your poem. Beautifully rendered!

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  8. Beautiful in every sense, and the course reference is well written and enjoyable to read indeed. Well done. Warm greetings!

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  9. Love this... ah, got it. Love especially "discussing emotional boundaries" which really made me guffaw.

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  10. Oh, this is hilarious! The third stanza has to be my favorite.

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