Poems of the Day 02.14.09

happy valentine's day, you bastards.

first the sour....

seymour

i was new to the school
after having suffered a shit year
in wellsburg, west virginia.
my folks brought me back
to pittsburgh
and we moved to the suburbs
and i landed in this catholic school
where i couldn’t take my eyes
off of tara jones.
i was nine but i already
had a thing for women,
a passion they would rarely return
to me.
anyway, tara had this friend, barb smith,
who used to catch me staring.
she’d make faces at me
or laugh
or she’d get tara’s attention
and then i’d have two of them on me
during a spelling or math class.
then valentine’s day came
and our teacher made us decorate
kleenex boxes in red and pink and white,
so that we could set them on our desks
and all go around
dumping valentines in each other’s boxes.
the teacher gave us cupcakes
and let us open our cards.
i didn’t do too bad.
but going through them, i noticed
that tara never gave me one.
barb did, however, and when i opened hers
it read
“knock, knock.”
“who’s there?”
“seymour.”
“seymour, who?”
“seymour reasons to like you all the time.”
except barb had scratched out “like”
substituting it with the word “hate.”
hate knocked me a little,
but truthfully i was surprised barb
even cared at all.
and when i finally looked up,
i watched tara and barb eating
their cupcakes and sharing
each other’s valentines.
they looked so innocent,
like little girls should.
i took another glance.
then i put my head down
and thought about something else
to pass the time
in that school
until i could go home
and sit in my bedroom.

....and then the sweet.

allyson

if it wasn’t
for you
i would be nothing.
you know this
and are thankfully
modest.