~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Susan Swartwout

(Three poems in memory of my Southern high-school experience.)

Grains of Sand on Myrtle Beach

The two-piece, tight-bottomed, padded-cup blue swimsuit

was more than I realized at age fifteen. I guess

I thought it was my smile—the way the boys would come

buzzing around, lazy-like, after my daddy had gathered his towel,

burn, and ingrown toenails off the beach to trudge back to the campground.

The way they moseyed past, looked down, nudged, turned—their smiles

like thick, raw honey, all golden. The way they sat down close, as if

my towel were a small island. The way the sand on one boy’s smooth, hard

back needed to be brushed off—right then. The way his nipples tightened

upon themselves like pale snail shells. We whispered a night tryst—

him, contriving moves; me, juggling romance and reticence with the practical

business of sketching lies for parents, bribes for brothers. The two unchosen

boys with him just looked out to the restless sea, as if bored or flotsam.

Campfires burned high on that night’s beach, shadows flickered over

the char-defiled dunes, and somewhere, everyone’s father lurked behind

wild sea-oats. All we accomplished was to show up, hold sweaty hands

for an hour or two, surrender the business of sex to a riper year, other guiles.

Then we crept, like ill-starred sand crabs, back to the grit of our separate tents.

Only—a Woman’s Place

                         Yasss, Queen!

My Texas granny told me, Now that you’re wed,

you must dress like a married woman. She meant,

only in dresses. She meant, wear the apron of making all

the Southern recipes she’d cooked her whole life: buttered grits,

cola cake, rum balls, fried bologna in a tiny, one-butt kitchen.

She meant, congratulations, here’s your girdle.

She believed that, in the male dominion, I must accept

being only female. That I will fail at most tasks, since I am

lesser. That my failures will be strung across my kitchen,

the only room of my own. That I will be held accountable unless

I bat my eyes, plead silly, push a syruped drawl, and ask forgiveness.

Even then, my feminine failures would hang from the pot-rack,

far over my head, to bear witness to my daily uselessness.

But, dearest Granny, I left your white picket ranch to learn that

females have brains and brawn. That the arrogance of knives

is not mine, nor do I want it. That the privilege in rules of roles

excludes 49.6% of the world. That certain Truths are evident,

foremost, to preserve palest mankind as it has appointed itself.

                                                                                            That finally,

I could step from a wallpaper made of only women—

and from the bone basket of my skull, set loose

the fertile dragon’s egg of my own possibilities,

now hatched and freed of foundations that may only

tighten, encompass, compress, or otherwise hold me in.

To the High School Classmate with Chronic Saturday Night Fever Who Chides Me for Not Attending Reunions

You can keep your reunions

with their poodle skirts,

spin hula hoops until everything hurts,

play Chubby Checkers,

play with best friends who

you used to ignore as “dorks” way back then.

Yeah, pretend you’re a jock

and it’s Saturday Night—

on your right tit a letter,

your socks are snow white.

Although I don’t dig it,

you go right ahead, but

you really can’t dance.

Heck no,

I’m not jealous—

What do I care?

I went to four high schools,

I’ve lived everywhere.

I don’t own a class ring,

can’t sing a school song.

Far be it for me to tell you you’re wrong

for cruising on back to the sixties

and then

making me listen again and again

to your real funny stories

of puking in Fords.

No way can you dance.

So every five years

like the plague it comes back:

the masquerade gala

that my sad life lacks

since I’ve never festered in one place that long,

I’ve never labelled “Teen Angel” my song,

I can’t bear to be hauled down that same Memory Lane

with “ChaCha” and “Ace”—teen angst is a pain.

Rock your white polyester, I’m staying at home.

(And you still can’t dance.)