The Geography of Girlhood Read Online Free Page B

Jenny Arnold
    standing in the locker room,
    wearing nothing but her underwear and a rose tattooon her hip—
    a thorny invitation to sniff
    and get pricked.
    Jenny Arnold doesn’t care who sees her and whyshould she?
    She’s a rock star in a room full of doofs,
    she’s done things the rest of us have never evenread about.
    She walks towards me, topless and queenly and
    I realize I’ve been dreaming about getting hit byJenny Arnold
    all summer long, the way some girls dream aboutgetting kissed.
    Suddenly, I can’t wait for the punch;
    at least I’m going to die at the hand
    of someone who’s beautiful and cool.
    I close my eyes and wait
    to get smacked, but instead
    Jenny Arnold smiles and says,
    Welcome to high school
    and then she walks away,
    heading toward the showers
    like a flower blooming towards the rain
    and for no reason at all,
    I go from feeling cursed to blessed,
    because like any goddess on high,
    Jenny Arnold has the gift of taking life
    and she has the gift of giving it back.
     
Just Friends
    Why I have to have a locker right next to Randall Faber,
    I will never know.
    Every day I see him and we pretend like it’s normal
    like we’re “just friends”
    except inside I feel kind of sick,
    knowing that no matter how old I get,
    Randall Faber will always be my first kiss,
    my first beginning, my first end.
    I guess the upside is that
    now I’m a woman with a past,
    I’m not all present and future like I used to be
    and maybe that’s a good thing
    if it weren’t so absolutely awful.
     
Biology
    Some people are only happy if they are making your life
    miserable and Mr. Horter is one of them. He enjoys the
    torture of frogs and freshmen. His life is sure to be
    awful, because his head is pointy and he is cruel and
    his pants are weird. He is destined to a life with a wife
    who (I’ve seen her) is as mean as he is. I imagine them
    kissing each other at the door when he comes home.
    Then I try to imagine him getting her pregnant (which
    she is) and all I can imagine is two people bumping up
    against each other in a pitch-black room. I don’t know
    what my life holds, but if it’s anything like Mr. Horter’s,
    I don’t want it. What I’d like to know is, shouldn’t they
    have teachers that inspire you to grow up, instead of
    people whose lives seem to say,
Stop now because it’s
    never going to get any better?
     
Erosion
    Denise and Elaine don’t talk at all anymore.
    They are like that cliff in town,
    the one that’s sliding into the sea.
    Geologists say the erosion was inevitable.
    Nothing could stop it,
    not with the rain and the wind the way it is.
    Whether it’s soil or best friends,
    things can’t help but slip away and disappear.
    I guess nothing on the map ever stays fixed.
    All you can do is make sure you’re not standing on it
    when it goes.
     
My Mother at Fifteen
    I don’t know much about my mother, just that she had
    wanderlust all her life, even at fifteen, with her lipstick
    and her too-short skirt and her foster parents yelling at
    her from the house. My mother was a person who
    always wanted to leave wherever she was.
    She told me once that her first kiss was with a traveling
    salesman. She told me once that she left home at
    sixteen. She told me once that I was just like her.
     
The Valley
    After the first semester of tenth grade
    is over, I ride my bicycle
    into Anderson Valley.
    I’ve never been down here before
    and there’s something faraway about it,
    the way it’s overgrown with cows and plum trees
    and the distant cat calls of dogs and birds.
    I guess the thing I never imagined about high school
    is how suddenly there would be a whole landscapeof boys
    and it’s not like I get to take my pick or anything,
    but I can be in love with whomever I want,
    I could love someone who’s two years older
    or six inches taller,
    I could love someone who hunts
    or someone who fishes,
    or someone who doesn’t believe in either.
    The rain is starting now and
    I pedal