from Fingerling Lakes
Lab
The Bio teacher’s
stepped out for a cigarette
when Fen recoils
from the tarnished tray
and says she won’t
dissect the fetal pig
This body has been
rendered unto the Lord
and we do Him injury
to break its vessel
Sylvia’s unimpressed
Miss Spooky Bits here
is not going to make
me fail this lab
and she lobs the pig
onto Fen’s chest
who scrambles
backward and tears off
her baggy sweatshirt
with the formaldehyde imprint
Thus revealing
unmistakably
how far along she is
Sylvia points with glee
Wow I’d hock
that purity ring
if I were you Sweetheart
Fen’s hand goes
automatically to
her belly as if
a spike is vibrating there
and the room is so quiet
I can almost hear
her fragile hair slip down
to cover her face
as she lowers her head
and doesn’t get up
Sylvia advances on her
as if she’s going to tie her
legs together like a calf
but is brought up short
when I grab her by
the ponytail
jerking her backward
so I can hiss into her ear
I will break your fucking neck
if you touch our girl
dialogue I got
from one of Jay’s
coverless paperbacks
Sylvia tries to twist away
but I drag her further
off-balance
and she goes limp
Fen looks up at me
registering how scared I am
and envelops us in a hug
whispering
I forgive you both
~
Wobblies
Detention takes place
under the flayed
face of the anatomy dummy
glistening hieroglyphs
of ovaries and testes
Those hormonal stars that make us
scrabble at and gnaw
each other
Stell blows the bangs
off her forehead
and determinedly returns
to the 500 lines of
Kindly maintain a dignified silence
we have to write
because we told Cheryl
to shut up about
her fable
Her prediction
that we’ll be eaten
by the football team’s
crusty
communal
spank sock
they’ve stiffened over her
so many times
it’s come alive
and is seeking out
the lesser social lifeforms
Just think she told us
wistfully
All those dead soldiers
who could never get inside me
will end up swallowing you
Such irony
Stell thinks Cheryl’s a hard case
Like her hairstick’s
actually a shiv
But I hear the wet inhale
of terror
bubbling in her
B‑movie metaphor
The way Mom winces
at the TV ads for pills
for ready intimacy
even when
your husband’s zombie-eyed
with cataracts
Or how Miss Nacre smiles
wryly at the class clowns
Like the Wobblies she always says
Who thought they’d eat pie
in the sky
By and by
~
Alternative
Officially we aren’t
at the health food store
since Dad thinks
they snort saffron
and feel guilty
about the electrical life
in tomatoes
But Mom buys me
mandrake bars
that fork
into syrup and earth
in my mouth
and I like to watch her flirt
with the gentle burnout
outfitted in the biker beige
of suede vest and flaxen
harem pants
Mom says she talks to him
because the Lord likes losers
but he’s got a bassist’s hands
and the loose-jointed look
of having slept around
in Renaissance Faires
When she gets that shy smile
I walk back
between the painfully-unfinished
wooden shelves
the bins of dusty beans and grains
and remember Miss Nacre
telling us spices
camouflaged rotting meat
and embalmed bodies
At the back
the community board
is a haphazard collage of crystals
taped up in overlapping
centerfolds of alien genitalia
Folks offering the dead
like runway models to tell you
how to live and why
the biotin isn’t activated
in your blood
How we’re still suffering
from an ancient Egyptian
plague of wheat
I hear Mom asking
the clerk if he can say
They were sore afraid
in Elvish to her
as my eye glosses over
the one-shot seminars
and promises
to find an air-brushed shot
of Fen wearing a fancy bathrobe
and advertising laying-on
of hands
in the lineage of Esther
Salomé and Joan of Arc
~
Simeon Berry won the National Poetry Series for his first collection of poetry, Ampersand Revisited (Fence Books), and his second book of poetry, Monograph (University of Georgia Press). He has been an Associate Editor for Ploughshares and won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant, and his work has appeared in AGNI, Colorado Review, Blackbird, DIAGRAM, The Iowa Review, and many other journals.