Freshman Poet Laureate

by Craig Donofrio

He sat with a pencil, staring at her long blonde hair drift along

the metal back of the chair.

‘I want to open the locker of your thighs,

and spend my free periods there.’

He bit his pen, furrowed his brow.

‘You swim like a school of eels through my mind,

and you make my heart beat as if it had been rained on

by coffee-filled clouds, in a street puddled with gasoline rainbows.’

The girl in front of him shifted, her hair swinging in the air like golden strings.

‘But you look at all the other guys, the bastard peacocks

with their popped collars and their brightly-colored

shirts, flexing and squeezing themselves into

a bus for some sports game, sweating oil, the

steroid sardines.’

The girl cleared her throat, exposed her neck.

‘And I have a level 80 Warlock with three epic mounts.’

He crossed that line out in deep blue ink scratches.

‘I want to mount you with epicness’

He smirked but crossed out that line too

“I want to play your neck like a flute,

make you turn to my tune

fill you full of my breath

tear off your pants like taffy—’

The bell rang, he dropped his pen,

stooped for it among the shoes and sneakers

She was gone when he looked up again.

He sighed and thought,

‘I am going to pine away here alone,

all alone, until I fall away like dried out nettles.’

He stayed there for a full minute until the teacher

cleared her throat and tapped a shuffle of papers on her desk.