Freshman English
Poetry (haha) Journal
Thursday 9/7

If this room were a clock . . .

a rectangular clock . . .

(but not a digital clock,

since that wouldn’t make sense)

and the front of the room were 12 o’clock,

I’d be at about 4 o’clock

and Giulio would be at about 9 o’clock.

Or, to use a Brady-ish comparison,

if the room were a baseball diamond,

and the front of the room were home plate,

my desk would be just behind 3rd base,

and Giulio would be at 1st base.

But connecting “Giulio” with “1st base”

is making me feel a little unusual.

Like when I ate shrimp and broke out in hives.

Probably just an unavoidable side effect of FUTURE LOVE.

Or GUILT over having 1st-base-kind-of-thoughts

about my best friend’s boo.

But I’m not doing this on purpose!!

And even if I were, I’m not actually DOING anything.

My immediate goal is to be JUST FRIENDS with him.

Though I’ve never experienced it myself, I’m told

it’s possible to be JUST FRIENDS with a boy-type person.

I know I tend to fall for all guys I, uh, meet, but that doesn’t

mean I’m “obsessed with the opposite sex,” as Brady says.

My ancestors were Greek and Brazilian,

so it may just be a cultural thing.

We’re supposed to respect cultural differences, right?

Brady, on the other hand,

has been in close contact with boys for years—

and when I say “close contact,” I do mean it,

because she plays sports with them—

but somehow, unexplainably,

she has never, ever gone

beyond being JUST FRIENDS.

Even with some majorly sweaty kinds of encounters

(picture soccer, if you dare),

she has not had an, uh, out-of-bounds kind of interest in ANY guy.

Not ONE.

Until now.

NOW, when I’ve come face-to-face with my destiny.

(Wiiiiiiish.)

So WHAT if I put her up to it?

On that night before she left for Europe,

when I wrote on her hand with my Sharpie pen:

MEET A CODE-RED EURO-HOTTIE,

I never in a zillion years thought she would actually DO it,

much less bring one home and keep him to herself.

Oh, what a selfish, selfish girl.

From where I sit, I can see his

dark brown hair, straight and pulled into a ponytail

at the back of his neck, swishing just a little bit

each time he starts a new line in his own journal.

Brady says he’s an artist, so maybe he’s sketching.

Or he could be “mimicking the style of e. e. cummings,”

as the Colonel has suggested we do.

We studied e. e. cummings today, and though I have

a couple of burning questions about this poet,

I am still intimidated by the military leadership of this room

and worry that if I say the wrong thing

I will have to do 75 push-ups,

or I will be sent to the stocks.

(I don’t know what that means, actually.)

Here are the couple of things

I’m wondering about e. e. cummings:

Did he get points off for capitalization errors

every time he wrote his name on his homework?

And . . .

when he was a little kid and went to the zoo,

did he think the chimps all knew his name?

I’m sure, too, that other people in my class

have similarly fascinating questions in mind,

but there is still very little noise coming out of this room.

The only one who spoke up today was Shakita,

who sits in front of me, and recited—

even though she wasn’t asked to—

a line from an e.e. poem the Colonel had written on the board.

“‘he sang his didn’t,’” she read slowly,

pausing after the “didn’t.”

“‘he danced his did,’” she finished,

with a special emphasis on the “did.”

And then she asked the Colonel,

“So, what did he do? Cut words out of

magazines and throw them in the air?”

We all just stared at her, then at the Colonel,

wondering how he would react to this insubordination.

But he just said, “Interesting. Does anyone else share her view?”

And he started looking around, trying to make eye contact

with SOMEONE, but we were all averting our gazes—

to walls, ceiling, floor, ants marching along the baseboards,

the flagpole out the window, our cuticles, etc.

Just as he was reaching for his grade book

to probably begin calling on us randomly,

Shakita piped up again and said,

“Zher view. Like ‘pleasure’ minus the ‘pleh.’”

So we all went back to staring at her.

“Zher view?” the Colonel repeated.

“Yes, ‘zher’ view,” she said.

He looked us over, again,

in a fairly baffled way,

so we all returned to the gazing-around activity.

It was then that I began imagining

that I could see these gazes of ours,

criss-crossing the space between us like laser beams

or maybe strands of silk from a spider.

Well, like silk from a spider,

only not from its butt,

which I think is the actual case in nature.

Clearly an argument

for remaining indoors as much as possible,

and one I will try next time my dad is

trying to shoo me away from “The O.C.” reruns.

ANYWAY.

The longer we sat there, looking around,

the more—in my highly creative mind—the room filled up

with these shimmery strands,

tying all of us together into a wild jumble,

with—very conveniently—desks 9 o’clock and 4 o’clock

locked in a Tetris-like embrace.

It was just about then in my mind-wanderings

that Shakita piped up again.

(OKAY, it was a LITTLE bit after,

but I’m NOT writing stuff like

that in a school journal,

even IF the teacher says

he’s not reading it.)

“You asked if anyone shares ‘her’ view,” Shakita said,

“and I’m just more comfortable with gender-neutral pronouns.”

Not understanding a bit of that, I drifted back into my PG-13 web.

(Thoughts which I KNOW are wrong to have

about my best friend’s boyfriend,

so there’s no need to point that out,

thank-you-very-much.)

Uh, who am I talking to in all these parentheses?

AAAH! I must have those little devil-angel arguers

hanging out on my shoulders!!

GET OFF!!! I’m swatting at you!!

(In my mind, luckily.)

The angel just fell off.

Oh. Darn.

To get back to the story, the Colonel said to Shakita, “Explain.”

And though one part of me (think: long red tail)

wanted to think about you-know-who,

the other part of me (the winged part)

was curious about what Shakita was getting at.

(WHAT is HAPPENING? Inquisitive thoughts, tiny beings

on my shoulders? It’s INSANE being me right now.)

“I’d just rather people use ‘zher’ instead of ‘her,’

when referring to me,” Shakita said, with a confident ’tude,

as if she weren’t in a military academy.

(Which she isn’t, of course, but you know what I mean.)

“And also ‘zhe’ instead of ‘she.’

It’s more open-minded,” she added.

Uh, I mean, zhe added.

The Colonel looked SERIOUSLY confused now

and began his room-scanning again,

which began our gaze-averting again,

so I began my day-dreaming again,

until I was interrupted AGAIN,

but this time by the voice of . . .

Giulio.

“I am, eh, in agreement with this Shakita,” he was saying,

Which caused our leader to look even MORE confused.

“You want me to call you ‘zhe’ also?” he asked Giulio.

And though many people in the class chuckled at this,

I, being the open-minded person I am,

nodded toward Giulio in a supportive way

and said to the Colonel, “I, too, want to be called ‘zhe.’”

And then Giulio glanced at me kindly,

but also with an expression

that one might give to a visitor

from a planet outside our solar system.

And then he said to the Colonel,

“I meant I am agreeing

with Shakita’s opinion of the poet.”

“I knew that!” I said, WAY too perkily.

And thinking this to be the perfect time to

relocate my life to a new city,

I darted out of the room

with Taz-like swiftness,

leaving the Colonel announcing to the class,

“Zhe left zher backpack here!”

Not really, of course. I am OBVIOUSLY still in this room.

Just hanging out, trying to express my feelings today

in these seven-line stanzas of faux poetry.

(Why seven? Why NOT?)

Even writing faux poetry, though, is a MAJOR chore for me,

since I am so, so very poetry-challenged.

Is that a handicap, I wonder? Maybe I can get special services.

Shakita has just passed me a note.

It says:

“Gender Neutral Alliance meets on Thursday after school.”

As Brady’s grandmother would say: OY VAY.

Which is probably a Yiddish cussing phrase,

Making it quite PERFECT

to express the types of feelings I’m, uh, feeling.

PERFECT, like the Colonel says

this other e. e. cummings poem is.

The one that’s also on the board, and is called “1(a.”

There are less than twenty letters in the entire thing,

perfectly arranged so each line is complete

but for one minor thing: words.

As in, the type you find in a dictionary.

The Colonel claims the poem

“highlights the

theme of oneness

in every possible way.”

And that it’s brilliant.

Which gives me

real hope that even I . . .

c

ou

ld b

e vi

ewed a

s br

illian

t on

e da

y.