Colegio
by Elena Haliczer

Was all of it soft hair
and gurgling in the throat
was it the pebble
toe kissed and ignored
was it a feeble kick
at the goalie post
that surprise at no
mosquitoes
was it more or less
your own wiser and cooler
and blonder wants
or were those yours before
and after school
and the whole while that you read
the same book
mysteriously left in the apartment
in your room, a Harlequin
cover to cover and over
felt lamb’s ear soft
all the longing
afternoons
until you knew
you wanted ravishment
until you wanted to be kept
in a room like a kestrel on a
string
and banished to a hot
darkness
where the knotted tongue
didn’t matter

Elena Haliczer has her MA in English and American Literature from Northern Illinois University. By day she works as a researcher and web market analyst for NIU. By six she's exhausted. Her current projects include several ongoing series of poems as well as a verse play. Her band Candy Sweat is mixing their first album "Heed the Hydra," which will be released in August. Her blog on various topics, including some drafts of poetry, and musings on life as a twenty-something, and the ins and outs of starting a career in internet marketing is at www.strawmachines.blogspot.com.

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