Inscape 04 FINAL - Pasadena City College
Inscape 04 FINAL - Pasadena City College
Inscape 04 FINAL - Pasadena City College
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L EE F ISHBACK M. HA YES<br />
Sunday School The Princess of Grade Five<br />
Ministerial servants should likewise be serious, not<br />
double-tongued, not giving themselves to a lot of<br />
wine, not greedy of dishonest gain.<br />
He collects<br />
Tithe the toll<br />
Save my soul<br />
Stand up straight<br />
Toilet bowl<br />
Feet so cold<br />
He on knees<br />
Forceful one<br />
Probing tongue<br />
Mine the shocks<br />
Tingle-knot<br />
Not yet taut<br />
His eyes see<br />
Idol me<br />
Going pee<br />
Not the mouth<br />
My first kiss<br />
On the lips<br />
Just before<br />
Me spread bare<br />
He led prayer<br />
1 Timothy 3:8<br />
My friend Jane was the coolest girl in<br />
school, for an entire month. Though her<br />
reign didn’t last long in hindsight, it<br />
seems like time moved slower back then. When we<br />
were in the fifth grade, she went “steady” with<br />
a boy in eighth. He had horrible skin and dirty<br />
hair; what he lacked in looks was somehow paled<br />
by the shadow of his maturity. Jane and Carlos’<br />
romance lasted exactly two weeks, and three<br />
days. It equaled an eternity of pubescent experience<br />
to us. She told us how he held her hand<br />
when they’d walk to the field of the public<br />
school near her house, on Grove St. There, he<br />
had given her a French kiss, his braces cutting<br />
her upper lip; leaving a small, swollen, crisscross<br />
wound. She taught us how to give the muchtalked<br />
about hickey. Loudly sharing her stories<br />
on the lunch benches, our ears and the blacktop<br />
absorbing every word. On the day she told us<br />
how he had poked her non-existent breast with<br />
his pointer finger, my best friend Vicky spilled<br />
her juice box all over her five button, freshly<br />
bleached, uniform shirt. Most of the girls were<br />
jealous, didn’t believe. Some called Jane ugly<br />
names that reverberated off the porcelain sinks<br />
in the girls’ bathroom. Hard words: tramp,<br />
slut, cheap–words they had learned from their<br />
mothers when their fathers paid a bit too much<br />
attention to pretty waitresses, flirting for<br />
tips–as if we even knew what those words really<br />
meant. No matter what they whispered into burning<br />
ears, they still came every day to listen.<br />
All I knew was that I was terrified. I thought<br />
no boy would ever hold my hand, kiss me on wet<br />
grass beneath a Eucalyptus tree, getting his<br />
INSCAPE • 68 INSCAPE • 69
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