Flower Conroy

Ninth Grade Physical Education

I startled myself staring at the backs
of her burnt butter legs.  That area below
cotton underwear.  Her tailbone’s dip.

The sway of highlighted hair between shoulder
blades.  My teacup mouth, porcelain saucer face.
Brain say suckable.  But hear the echo

of succulent.  Relent.  Golden vegetables bruised
with overripeness.  The music of flies in gray gardens.
Chemical pool smell of the locker room embarrassed

me out of that fleshy, cannibal daydream.
When the dashing quarterback pulled my pants down
in the middle of the gymnasium, unprovoked

in my mind, I wanted to kick the sunuvabitch
in his nut sac.  I stood there like a dumb
statue.  Not the pretty kind; not the Venus.






Flower Conroy’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in: American Literary Review; Serving House Journal; Psychic Meatloaf; Sweet; Saw Palm; Blaze VOX; The Battered Suitcase and other journals. She will be attending Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA program in January 2011. Ms. Conroy currently lives in Key West, Florida.