From Fragile Cargo by Simon Jackson, BeWrite Books
Sex Ed
Male and female physiology.
Sexual reproduction in mammals.
Pre-natal development. Child birth.
I circle my hand
and enclose the uneven writing
in a chalk placenta.
"That is the scope of these lessons.
Anything outside this circle
will not be discussed."
And then, trying to hold back
a shiver of nerves:
"Any questions?"
Embarrassed silence, glowing cheeks,
eyes furtively flicking from rubber
to pencil to sharpener and back,
each endowed with symbolic significance.
Then one arm, extending erect:
"Sir, is it true what me sister told me?
She said that when her mate did it..."
and another arm, extending slowly as a snail's antler,
and another, gently waving until
the class is an opened sea anemone.
"I heard if you done it standing up..."
"Sir, why do people do it?"
''Does it go up the same hole a lady pees from?"
"Sir, does it hurt a lot?"
All these nervous, giggling, embarrassed faces,
each shining with eagerness to know
the secret rites of this arcane, adult world.
"Sir, do you and your wife, y'know,
do you and your wife still do it?"
When did our bodies cease to be
a solemn, magical mystery to each other,
become mundane, disorderly and vaguely embarrassing?
Once more I motion to the board.
"These questions are outside the circle."
Building a Box
(for Jennifer)
He planes the maple in long smooth sweeps
of his joiner’s hands.
Shavings rise like smoke
and tumble in a wave-break
of scattered curls below,
crisp and delicate as shells.
In my hands they are
warring scorpions, drifting leaves,
a cascading avalanche.
I am shooed away with hands
huge as oak trees.
The sky is wooden.
Clouds curl in whorls of grain
around a knot of sun.
He carves hidden joints and panels with
chiselled thumbs,
fingers blunt as hammers.
He pieces together
a box perhaps
a mastless boat. It seems
a simple puzzle for such hours of sweat;
his face is gleaming, head bent.
Slow hands build wood dark with wax,
sail the surface in tiny circles
concealing deeper maps of grain.
He will not come and join me
on the big stone table from where I
set sail to distant lands
or let me ride the tempest
of his hurricane shoulders
about the yard.
I watch. Waiting.
He takes me
shell like
to his warm ship of body
and sorrow breaks
over him like a wave.
It seems a small vessel to hold six
months of baby sister.
Sex Ed
Male and female physiology.
Sexual reproduction in mammals.
Pre-natal development. Child birth.
I circle my hand
and enclose the uneven writing
in a chalk placenta.
"That is the scope of these lessons.
Anything outside this circle
will not be discussed."
And then, trying to hold back
a shiver of nerves:
"Any questions?"
Embarrassed silence, glowing cheeks,
eyes furtively flicking from rubber
to pencil to sharpener and back,
each endowed with symbolic significance.
Then one arm, extending erect:
"Sir, is it true what me sister told me?
She said that when her mate did it..."
and another arm, extending slowly as a snail's antler,
and another, gently waving until
the class is an opened sea anemone.
"I heard if you done it standing up..."
"Sir, why do people do it?"
''Does it go up the same hole a lady pees from?"
"Sir, does it hurt a lot?"
All these nervous, giggling, embarrassed faces,
each shining with eagerness to know
the secret rites of this arcane, adult world.
"Sir, do you and your wife, y'know,
do you and your wife still do it?"
When did our bodies cease to be
a solemn, magical mystery to each other,
become mundane, disorderly and vaguely embarrassing?
Once more I motion to the board.
"These questions are outside the circle."
Building a Box
(for Jennifer)
He planes the maple in long smooth sweeps
of his joiner’s hands.
Shavings rise like smoke
and tumble in a wave-break
of scattered curls below,
crisp and delicate as shells.
In my hands they are
warring scorpions, drifting leaves,
a cascading avalanche.
I am shooed away with hands
huge as oak trees.
The sky is wooden.
Clouds curl in whorls of grain
around a knot of sun.
He carves hidden joints and panels with
chiselled thumbs,
fingers blunt as hammers.
He pieces together
a box perhaps
a mastless boat. It seems
a simple puzzle for such hours of sweat;
his face is gleaming, head bent.
Slow hands build wood dark with wax,
sail the surface in tiny circles
concealing deeper maps of grain.
He will not come and join me
on the big stone table from where I
set sail to distant lands
or let me ride the tempest
of his hurricane shoulders
about the yard.
I watch. Waiting.
He takes me
shell like
to his warm ship of body
and sorrow breaks
over him like a wave.
It seems a small vessel to hold six
months of baby sister.