Deadly Chemistry
8 Speech
THE NEXT WEEKEND, we had two games. It seemed like we’d hardly been playing yet, but there would be no games the next weekend because of Thanksgiving. So, we played Friday night and Saturday afternoon this weekend. Coach Hancock had come into the gym on Monday morning while Whitney and I were working out before school. It had gotten too cold and snowy to practice outside at home. We had a mat down and had moved from forms to sparring. Coach blew his ever-present whistle and we backed off, turning to face him.
Coach walked right up to me and pulled my shirt up out of my pants. I had a couple bruises that were past their prime, but that’s when they always look the worst with the yellow/orange glow around them. He looked at Whitney. She pulled her shirt up just below her bra and showed him her bruises.
“How long have you two been doing this?”
“Uh… almost two years, sir.”
“With no gloves?”
“No, sir.”
“Do either of you have any idea how stupid that is? Those bruises after the game last year?”
“Coach, we’ve only been sparring since July and didn’t do it most of the summer,” Whitney said.
“So mostly you’ve been beating the crap out of each other for two-and-a-half months.”
“Yessir.”
“You can’t do it here. Even with gloves. If the school administration discovered we were allowing full contact martial arts in the gym I’d be out a job and you’d probably both be expelled.”
“It’s too cold to work outside now.”
“You shouldn’t be in full contact without protection anyway,” Coach said. He looked at me. “Who is your master?” I didn’t know how to answer so I looked at Whitney. She nodded. “Ah. And yours?”
“Master Cho, Coach.”
“Tai Chi?”
“Rarely, Master Cho takes a disciple… for more advanced training. I have been with him for eight years.”
“Black belt?”
“We don’t use belts. We don’t even use a gi. Master Cho is very traditional. I often wear a basketball uniform. He suggested a couple years ago that I begin training my own disciple. We would rather that no one know our relationship or training.”
“You should use pads.”
“We have never used pads.”
“I can’t have you sparring in the gym. Katas, yes, but no sparring. Doesn’t Master Cho have a place where you can work?”
“Master Cho would rather not know my disciple.”
“I’ll work on it. For now, you both need work on your upper body strength. Brian, your three-point shot is barely making the rim. Five times up the rope. Each of you. Every morning. Go. Go. Go.”
Whitney and I ran for the ropes. I always hated this, but Whitney reached and grabbed the first rope and I leapt for the second so she didn’t get ahead of me. I’m her disciple? What the fuck?
Two thick ropes hang side-by-side from the rafters of the gym. In Phys Ed, you have to show that you can get up the rope. You can shimmy, scoot, or climb any way you want. There were grade tapes marked off at ten-foot intervals with the ‘A’ and a bell on the beam forty feet up. We both knew what Coach wanted. We went hand-over-hand. That’s the fastest way and demands the most upper body strength. I heard Whitney’s bell half a second before I slapped mine and slid down the rope using my feet as brakes. As soon as our feet hit the floor, we started climbing again. We stayed together. It was impossibly hard work and I heard some shouts and encouragement from below as I started the fourth time up. Whitney had an unfair advantage in my book because her initial grab of the rope was much higher than mine. It was like having an extra two feet to climb.
There were lots of shouts from behind us, yelling ‘go, go, go’ as we started the final lap. My arms were burning. My lungs were burning. I’d never really raced anyone up the ropes and certainly not five times. The bells rang at the same time and Whitney and I both glanced at each other and smiled before we slid down. I wondered if she’d intentionally slowed on that last climb. We hit the floor and everybody started clapping. There were about a dozen athletes that we often saw in the morning lifting weights when we came in.
“Get in line!” Coach yelled. “Every morning, five climbs, every athlete. Let’s get strong.” A couple guys groaned but grabbed the resin bag and started to climb. They didn’t even pretend to race. Whitney and I headed for the showers.
“Well done, Grasshopper,” she snarked at me just before we reached the locker rooms.
Whatever Coach’s goal was in making us climb, my arms felt like jelly all week. All through practice I could hardly get the ball to the rim. Coach just shook his finger at me and said, “See? You need more upper body work.”
“Where is everybody?” I asked. I sat in Ms. Streeter’s classroom five minutes after the last bell and just half an hour from basketball practice. It was Thursday and she was having after-school meetings with each category representative for the speech contest coming up the first weekend of December.
“It seems that you are the only one preparing for the Oral Interpretation of Poetry division,” she sighed. “I just can’t get people to volunteer for this.”
“You mean I had a choice?”
“Not anymore. I already registered you. Now, what do you want to interpret?” This was going to be tricky. The poems got to me on Wednesday and when I read them I knew this was what I had to read. I knew where they came from but the envelope had no return address and was postmarked in Goshen. The simple typed note said, ‘Use these. If you dare. N’
“I have two poems by a little-known author,” I said. I reached to hand them to her. She waved me away.
“Let’s hear.” I hadn’t read them aloud yet and I found some of the cadences were harder to get around than I thought. The reading was pretty flat, even to my ear. “You can’t read those poems for competition,” she said when I was finished.
“But…”
“Not like that. These poems require depth and emotion. You read them like a grocery list. Where did you get these?”
“They were sent to me… um… by the author.”
“Nat Hart? Who is he?”
“I don’t know, but I like his poetry.”
“The rules state that the poem must be by a recognized poet. We need to know who Nat Hart is.” I wasn’t going to tell my suspicions.
“The Argosy Review published one of his poems.”
“Really?”
“He sent a clipping. I didn’t like that one as well as these two.” I showed her the clipping from the Argosy Review. Ms. Streeter smiled and nodded.
“Well, that takes care of that criterion, but there is still the matter of your oral interpretation.”
“I haven’t had a chance to practice them yet.”
“Work on them this weekend. I know you have basketball practice coming up quickly, so I won’t keep you now and I’m meeting with other category presenters after school the rest of this and next week. I’d like you to see me during your lunch hour on Tuesday. We’ll go over interpretation.”
“I can do them?”
“You may do them. It remains to be seen if you can.”
Amazingly, Friday night I was hitting my long shots and helped the team to a 63-58 victory over Silver Lake. Our poor varsity squad was still trying to get its act together. Lionel was anchoring the team and set a personal best with 28 points and 17 rebounds. Unfortunately, he had none of the heavy duty support he’d had the past two years. The varsity lost.
On Saturday, we met Union High, one of the traditional powerhouses. The roles were reversed; the JV lost by seven and the varsity won walking away. They were stoked. It was a short bus ride home and I spent the rest of the weekend reciting poetry to Silk, Rika, and Jingo. It must have been pretty bad, because as soon as I opened the barn door, all three horses ran through the snow for the back woods. I went to the hayloft and continued to practice and attempt to memorize the poems. Technically, the competition was a reading, so you didn’t have to memorize the poetry, but these pieces just called out for expression that I couldn’t give if I didn’t memorize it. For all I knew, I couldn’t do justice to them anyway. It was a lot harder than I thought.
“Wait, wait, wait. You can’t just depend on teenaged angst to get the message across. You have to think about what message the poet is sending and match the emotions to it. What’s the message here?” Ms. Streeter asked. I was in her classroom again and my stomach was growling because I missed lunch.
“It’s about a guy who’s angry because his girlfriend left him.” I’d decided when I first presented the poems that I’d always refer to the author and protagonist as a male. Nat Hart. Had to be a male.
“Oh, that’s so shallow, Brian. Think. This isn’t about a slighted love. This is about the massive betrayal of humanity. Who tells us lies and assures us that we’re secure for life then betrays us with lack of jobs, poverty, and war?”
“Um… the government?”
“Who promises eternal life, bliss, and joy, but attempts to harness everyone to a single way of thinking?”
“Religion?”
“Think bigger. If you are going to go all out on a limb with a poem like this, you have to go all in. Who holds happiness like a carrot on a stick and promises things that you can only verify in death?”
“God!”
“This author isn’t writing about a lover’s betrayal. Look at the imagery. ‘Washed in the blood.’ ‘Tell me lies.’ ‘Promises are always broken.’ Elevate your interpretation and make the poem universal instead of tying the author to an inconsequential daily event. No one gets this shaken up over the loss of a lover.”
I got a little pissed. What did she know about the loss of a lover? What did she know about individual torment and a teenager’s love? How could she possibly know what was going through Nikki’s mind when she wrote this? But maybe that was part of what I had to do. Nikki put a huge amount of trust in me when she sent these poems, even though the way she did it gave her plausible deniability. There was nothing that tied her to them and even if I told people she wrote them, all she’d have to do is deny it and say I was lying. I started reading again.
“Tell me lies. Tell me lies. Tell me true love never dies.”
“That’s better. Brian, this is a risky poem-set to present at a competition. The rape of the earth. Humanity’s suicidal march to the end times. God’s betrayal of his creation. Think about it over the break and practice it. You have enough intelligence to find deeper meanings in things that sound obvious. We’ll meet at lunch on Tuesday and Thursday next week. And for God’s sake, bring your lunch. I can’t stand to hear your stomach growling in the middle of your reading.”
Thanksgiving break was full. We got up early Thursday morning and went to Kokomo. We got there so early that I surprised the girls in bed. We kissed and tickled and played but didn’t get too involved because I had to get bread started. We all three went to the kitchen and discovered Mom, Dad, and Anna had disappeared.
“I think they expected us to be a little longer before we came to the kitchen,” Courtney giggled. “Probably lucky we didn’t find them all naked on the table.”
“Our parents are in love,” Jennifer stated. “Does that bother you, Brian?” I kissed Jennifer and slid a floury hand inside her robe to leave fingerprints all over her left breast.
“No. It should, I suppose, but I’ve never seen Mom and Dad so happy. Ten minutes ago, I had a hand on each of your pussies while you both kissed me and each other. I was happy. I had a feeling you were, too. It’s weird to think of your parents as sexually active and I admit that once when I was a freshman, I panicked when I realized I’d interrupted their love-making. But Mom and Dad are both young at heart. And Anna’s a fox. Believe me, I saw her naked enough times this summer to verify that. Why shouldn’t our parents be as happy as we are when we’re together?”
“You need to tell us where we’re going to college, Brian,” Courtney said. I kissed her and used my other hand to leave a floury print on her right breast. “You know you’re going to have to clean that off.”
“Why do I need to decide where we’re going to college?”
“Because our early acceptance applications are all ready to go and we don’t know where to send them.”
“You are convinced that we’re going to the same school?”
“Brian, unless you tell us that you don’t love us and don’t want to be with us in the future, we are going wherever you are going. I’d be tempted to wait and go to community college this year and transfer next year so we all go at the same time. I love you, Brian,” Courtney declared.
“I have to think about it. It seems like a bunch of the others want to go to the same school, too.”
“You don’t think we’re the only ones who are in love with you, do you?” Jennifer asked. “And if we didn’t think Samantha and Hannah would join us, we’d be devastated.”
“There’s no way to know what Hannah will do. I’ve sent her a letter every other week, but I never hear back.”
“She hasn’t returned any of our calls,” Jennifer said. “I just know it will work out somehow. I just know it.”
“How about the others?” Courtney asked. “Who else wants to be part of our group?”
“It’s bigger than I thought,” I said.
“That’s what I always say,” Courtney giggled.
“Come on.” I punched the bread a little harder than necessary. “Rose.”
“Oh yeah,” Jennifer sighed.
“Liz hasn’t decided if she’s going to college or technical school or just trying to get a job. But she plans to do it wherever we are.”
“Is she going to be your first?” Jennifer asked. “She can hardly wait until she’s seventeen. I bet she’ll try to rub you to a stub.”
“I don’t know. Now that I’m, uh… eligible, I find that I’m not that anxious. I mean, I’m getting a lot of loving from my girlfriends. I guess I should be ready to go pop some cherries if I were a real man.” Fortunately, both girls laughed and raised their hands. “But I’m not that anxious right now and frankly, I’m still hurting.”
“Honey, we feel the same way. Since you liberated us from the no-touching rule, we’ve been happy. Even having your finger or tongue in our pussies is a thrill,” Courtney said. “I think that with us all having been so sexually active without penetration, all the girls are less… anxious…? to be deflowered. Not that any of us would object, but… Sweetheart, you aren’t the only one hurting. She won’t answer any of our phone calls. Her mother has told our mothers that we shouldn’t call. Samantha is a wreck. She loves Hannah almost as much as I love Jennifer. And the truth is, we love both Samantha and Hannah about as much as we do each other and you. It’s going to work out. Somehow, we just have to believe that it will work.”
On Friday, Jennifer and Courtney wanted to go to the library instead of shopping. I’d read my poems to them and they were amazed that I was being allowed to use them. But they wanted to look up the Argosy Review and see if it said anything about the mysterious Nat Hart. What we discovered was that the Argosy Review had ceased publication ten years ago. The Kokomo library didn’t have any copies of it. A helpful librarian directed us to The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature and pointed out that it was a local publication from someplace in Illinois that was only published for about five years on a quarterly basis. The chance that we could find a copy was remote unless we went to Urbana-Champaign and tried the University of Illinois library where it would be more likely to have been added as a local publication. We really didn’t have any other options, so we went shopping.
I puzzled this over for a long time. I was sure the poems were from Nicolette. No one else would have known I was competing in that division. Well, no one except everyone at my lunch table where I’d bitched about it. That even included people that weren’t part of our official dating agreement. But if this was published in a magazine that hadn’t even existed after ten years ago, Nicolette would have been seven years old. It couldn’t be her. But it had to be her.
I’d given all my ten special girlfriends a Christmas gift last year, breaking our unwritten agreement not to exchange gifts. I’d been admonished that any gift I gave this year in excess of a one-and-a-half ounce bar of chocolate would be returned to me. Well, the Kokomo Mall had a really nice chocolatier. When I told the candy-maker what I wanted, she told me that it would keep until Christmas as long as I didn’t let it get hot enough to melt or cold enough to freeze. She said it shouldn’t even be refrigerated unless my house was just too hot for it. I only warmed my room up at one end unless people were coming over, so I figured I could make it happen. She told me that I needed to pick them up on Sunday.
According to the cars in the drive, all our parents were home, but we didn’t spot any adults in the house. Anna’s bedroom door was closed.
“It can’t be,” Courtney whispered once we were in Jennifer’s room. “My parents doing the nasty with yours? How does that even work? Two guys and three women? Oh God! The images in my head are going to give me nightmares!” I looked at Jennifer and winked at her. She nodded.
“We’ll just have to make those nasty images go away, won’t we?” I said as I started unbuttoning Court’s blouse.
“Um… what are…?” Jennifer cut her off by kissing her as she unzipped Court’s jeans. Court moaned. We attacked.
There were stray pieces of underwear or socks caught on a foot or arm, but it didn’t take long before the three of us were naked and Jen and I had Court sandwiched between us. Well, Jen and Court were sandwiched together in a truly spectacular 69, lying on their sides with one leg raised to give the other access to her pussy. I was pressed between Court’s butt cheeks and each time I slid back, Jen licked me as well as Courtney. At one point, Jen pulled me toward her and practically swallowed me, then swabbed my dick through Courtney’s wet pussy lips before I resumed sliding between her cheeks. I was really in the right position now and every time I moved against Court, I bumped her anus. Court’s whine brought Jen up as well and I found myself once again lodged tightly against—almost in—Courtney’s butt hole when all three of us exploded. Court pushed back against me so hard that at least half my cock head was inside her when I started coming. Court screeched into Jen’s pussy and that set Jen off on a huge orgasm of her own with all three of us wailing our pleasure.
When we finally pulled pajamas on and went out to find food for dinner, all five parents were sitting in the living room with glasses of wine. They simply stared at us as we went to the kitchen.
I met with Ms. Streeter on Tuesday and Thursday over lunch and brought my own sandwich. She worked with me on interpretation and I could see why she was a theater director. When I was in the play two years ago, I had five lines and four of them were the same. There wasn’t much I could do to mess up. But she worked with me on inflection and pacing, sometimes having me repeat a line four or five times until we were both satisfied. Then she worked with me on how to stand and what hand gestures to use. I thought she spent as much time talking to me about the poem as I spent reading it. She kept asking questions about what the author meant.
“What’s the hidden meaning when the poet says, “I can only hate you when I love; I can only love you when I hate?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. He’s posing a contradiction. He can’t only love and can’t only hate but has to embrace both sides.”
“And if he didn’t love her at all?”
“Then he couldn’t hate her either, I guess.”
“We’re going to do an exercise. I want you to read the poem and after the first line say, ‘I love you.’ After the second line, say ‘I hate you.’ Listen to the words, don’t try to interpret them. Just keep alternating back and forth with the intermediate phrases ‘I love you’ and ‘I hate you’.”
We met and fell to the Concord Minutemen Friday night. They were a school about the same size as ours and were undefeated in Class 3A. They’d dropped their game to Elkhart early in the season, but Elkhart is 4A with 500 more students than either of our schools. For several years, Concord had played against and been eliminated by Elkhart in the Sectionals when everyone was one class. The first year as 3A, they went to semi-state. This year it looked like they’d go all the way.
The thing was, they weren’t particularly bigger or faster than us. They just worked together like a machine. Every pass was right on target. Every rebound went immediately to a shooter. Their offense was flawless. Their defense left no place for us to get a shot off. I hit two three-pointers and they were both from much farther out than I normally shoot. It was only my upper body strength that let me get the ball that far.
Uh oh. Crap! That meant that Coach Hancock’s new regime of making us climb the rope was actually helping our playing. He’d upped our push-ups, too, though I think he was making Whitney and me do more in the morning than anyone else. And Whitney wasn’t even playing for our team anymore!
Our workouts changed, too. It was all kind of hush-hush. Our parents received a paper to sign—a waiver. We were all five called to the principal’s office after school on Monday and Whitney’s mom had to take Mom and Dad outside to explain to them what was going on. In the end, they signed the waiver of liability for the school and for Coach Hancock to watch our practice in the morning. There were stipulations. We had to wear prescribed pads and gloves and work on mats that coach set up in an exercise room. We came in and did our warm-ups like usual, but then Coach would follow us into the exercise room and close the door so no one could see what was going on. He’d watch us put our gear on and then spar. It wasn’t just sparring anymore, either. Whitney was taking more time to correct my moves and positions and to get better leverage on both my punches and my kicks. By the end of the week, Coach had moved an Everlast punching bag into the room. I’d seen the football guys in indoor workouts slamming into the bags. As soon as she saw it, Whitney smiled and started working me on the bag while she yelled at me for twenty minutes. Then Coach would send us to the rope for a five-lap race to the rafters.
Whatever, I’d pumped my three-pointers in from a solid twenty-five feet. They hadn’t been guarding us that far out. That changed.
Saturday morning, I spent a long time in the barn reciting poetry to the horses. Rika, of course, was most critical of my rendition, stomping her hoof and swishing her tail when it was apparent I was concentrating on anything but her. Jingo tolerated me as long as I kept brushing, but once on a particularly bad gaffe, he shook his mane like it sent shivers down his spine. Silk, of course, just stood and munched her hay as if she’d heard it all before.
I was at the school at nine and the bus took us to Warsaw for the competition.
I’m glad to say that I did okay in Extemporaneous. I’d put all that work into building my resource box and I wasn’t about to go to a competition and not use it again. I lucked out on my topic which was simply that public schools should or should not provide standard fast food items as an option for student lunches. I had a lot of nutritional information in my file simply because I’d been curious about what I was eating and what I was cooking. I cited references and studies comparing the nutritional standards of a typical school lunch and a McDonald’s burger, fries, and Coke. What it came down to was that, nutritionally, school lunches weren’t any better for us than a Big Mac and fries. I managed to put my pro fast food speech into a context that supported completely revamping the way school lunches were planned and prepared. I received third place in a field of eighteen speakers. Not bad.
I was pretty happy by the time three o’clock rolled around and I was given my reading order for poetry. I drew last presentation. Thankfully, poetry reading is always a small group and I’d still present within an hour. I sat through a guy completely butchering “Jabberwocky,” and a girl who giggled all the way through a set of e.e. cummings poetry. One person did two Shakespearean sonnets that would have been passable if he’d used an English accent to get the rhymes straight. Hmm. Who taught me that? I was amazed that someone did a pretty racy Rod McKuen poem and you could almost hear a bongo drum playing in his head while he read it. Oh, and there were a couple pretty good ones, too. A fellow did a condensed version of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which was legal, but I felt like he had to cut too much of the poem to fit in the five minutes. We’d had to read it in sophomore lit and it’s a really powerful poem. And there was a girl. Of course. She was tiny and looked like the kind of mousy little girl you’d expect to go “Shh!” at you in the library someday. But oh, what a voice. It was like music. She could have read the telephone book and I’d have loved it. In fact, I wasn’t sure afterward what she had read, I was just so mesmerized by her voice.
“Brian Frost.” I went to the podium. I carried the pages of the poems with me, but I already knew I wouldn’t use them. The girl had put me in such a state that I was totally relaxed and ready to speak.
“Solitude, by Nat Hart,” I said. I took a deep breath and barely whispered the first words.
Hush.
The solitude
Stealthily, warily
Creeps in upon
The unsuspecting prisoner
Of its all-encompassing spirit.
The heart beats.
The body relaxes.
The worried ones wait
To see what passes.
I did a pretty good job with it and felt the judges were with me all the way. When the reveal came that it was the poet who awaits the solitude and embraces it—death—over the fawning worried ones, the judges were a little taken aback. On one level, it is a poem of suicide. On another a rebellion against the expectations of those who surround him. ‘Hush. The solitude is over now.’ In the absence of the poet, life goes on and no one misses him. I paused and shuffled the pages on the podium to let everyone know that I was about to start a new poem.
“The Lover’s Cross, by Nat Hart,” I said after a moment’s pause to let the first poem fully sink in. I had to fight the ranting that Ms. Streeter had lectured me about. Whenever I thought about the lover’s betrayal, it just struck a chord that set me off. But in a couple of lines I was out from behind the podium walking toward the judges, looking at each of them as I recited the lines.
I am pierced to the core by your lance
And I bleed.
My love an inferno consuming your apathy.
I can only hate you when I love.
I can only love you when I hate.
But you want only my fear.
And now it is my turn.
I sharpen my blade on the stone of my heart.
I find you where you least expect—
Of course, you never expect—
Never think that I might come for you.
And in the dark of that night I pierce your side
And bathe in your blood as it rushes out with your life.
I am washed in the blood of the lamb.
Perhaps now you can think of one more thing to say.
One more little lie to help me.
Perhaps you can feel what your victim feels
And find something inside you that is not you.
Tell me lies. Tell me lies.
Tell me true love never dies.
And with your last breath
Say, ‘I love you.’
According to the protocol of the competition, I said, “Thank you,” and returned to my seat. I got a few strange looks from other competitors. The judges huddled together and I thought there was an awful lot of conversation going on. I supposed it was because they were tallying the scores of everyone to see who won. Most of the competitors who had left earlier were returning to hear the results. There was a lot of whispering going on.
“Brian Frost, will you return to the podium, please?” one of the judges called out.
“As to the rest of you, the results of the competition have been determined and the results will be posted on the message board in a few minutes. The judges have some questions for Mr. Frost and we would like to clear the room of all competitors and students. Please leave now and check the message board for the results.” I watched as everyone cleared the room trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Ms. Streeter moved to a seat directly behind the judges so I went up to the podium.
“Brian, first let me say that you did an excellent interpretation of very difficult material and that the results of the competition have been finalized. We’d like to ask you some questions but your answers will in no wise affect your scores or placement.”
“Do I need an attorney present?” I joked. They looked at each other and bent their heads together. Shit! I was kidding!
“No,” said the lead judge. “This is non-disciplinary and is a closed session that will not be reported. I ask the teachers in the room if this is acceptable.” He turned around and there were nods from the half dozen teachers who had stayed. “Is that satisfactory?”
“I was really just kidding,” I said. “What questions do you have?”
“Are you Nat Hart?”
“Uh… No sir. I am Brian Frost and I don’t write poetry.”
“Is Nat Hart a fellow student?” I needed to be honest, but really my knowledge that Nikki was Nat was speculative. But if I said that I didn’t know, they’d be on the lookout.
“I think that would be very difficult,” I said.
“Why?”
“In my research, I discovered that Nat Hart published at least one poem in the Argosy Review, though I don’t know the date. I do know, however, that the Argosy Review ceased publication ten years ago. If he was a classmate, it would mean that he was no more than eight when his earlier poem was published.” It looked like they all breathed a little easier.
“Our concern, Brian, is that while you did an excellent interpretive reading, you chose exceptionally dark material referencing suicide, rape, and murder. We are also aware of your previous performance in which you mentioned a girlfriend’s pregnancy and attempted suicide. Do you need help? Can you tell us why you chose this material and how you happened across it?”
“I can answer the factual questions. The poems were sent to me after I’d let just about everyone I knew in on the fact that my teacher was making me compete in this category. Not that I didn’t enjoy it. I’ve learned a lot more in my speech class than I ever expected to. The poems were sent to me without a return address but postmarked in Goshen. The envelope included a photocopied page from the Argosy Review validating that the author had been published. There was a simple note that said ‘Use these if you dare. N’ I like dares and I liked the poetry,” I said. “But I believe you are mistaken when you say these poems are about suicide, rape, and murder. ‘Solitude,’ for example, is not about an individual suicide, but about the way humanity has driven the earth into the ground. How we as a race are basically committing suicide, if you will, by blindly ignoring the warning signs around us. ‘The howling dogs,’ as the poet calls them. And when humanity is no more, the earth will not miss us. ‘The Lover’s Cross’ goes beyond indicting humanity and targets God. The symbolism is profoundly anti-religious. While that might be even less pleasant to some ears than rape and murder, the poet declares the Almighty to be unfaithful and a liar, justifying crucifixion.”
The judges just sat there staring at me. After a minute they glanced at each other and started gathering their papers.
“Thank you, Brian. Good luck in future competitions. That was an excellent interpretation that showed a great deal of preparation. You placed second in the competition. Congratulations.” First place, I discovered when I finally got to the message board, went to the girl with the magical voice. I was pleased. Ms. Streeter caught up with me just prior to the awards.
“Congratulations, Brian,” she said.
“You knew, didn’t you? Knew that they’d grill me?” She nodded. “Why did you let me use these poems if you knew they’d put me on some kind of witness stand?” Ms. Streeter looked me in the eye before she spoke very softly.
“Because she deserves to have her poetry heard.”
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