The Young Satirist Fancies Herself a Poet

Boys suck. Except for a select few. Usually when they suck I just curse, swear, eat ice cream and watch Sex and the City until my eyes are shriveled like rasins in my sockets. Sometimes I write about it. When I was in high school I fancied myself a poet. Occasionally I wrote something good, but it was mostly the typical schlock of an angry, patchouli-oil wearing teenager. Then I got to Emerson, and was broken down and rebuilt by Bill Knott. I hated him with a passion while I was in his forms of poetry class, but he got me away from the florid language and said, basically, "get to the damn point." So, since I can't think of anything to write about now, I give you a poem. Cheers.

When my handwriting would wobble
Despite my best attempts at keeping it steady,
I’d erase the errors. Rubber flakes dotting the table
My mother peering over my shoulder
Chiding me. “You need to press harder
When you erase. The letters are still there.”
My thoughts were anywhere but on the paper,
The maddening ghost-letters I couldn’t make disappear.
Later she came back, the faint lines still there. She put down
The laundry and took the pink eraser from me.
It looked easy when she did it—
Just make the mistakes disappear.
Her hands authoritative and strong
kept the paper from ripping
yet the ghosts vanished.
After my writing stopped wobbling
I wrote the initials of boys on my notebook
Then changed my mind.
I still couldn’t make the letters vanish
A faint reminder of the mistakes I’d made
Easy for anyone to see what I’d been thinking.
Now I’m grown
All my notebooks in storage
The names of men put into my cell phone,
In the computer, easily removed from the electronic ether
When infatuation ends. Nothing permanent, easy
To forget. I almost miss the smell of rubber and feeling
Of frustration.