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School Reunion- Miss Cadogan's Room

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        Miss Cadogan’s Room


Some smells just do it don’t they.?
The limbic whoosh  that picks you
Up so fast and drops you back in time, so true
And real, it barely feels like memory.
Her room of course had not remained the same.
But one faint trail of polish,  chalk and, books
Structured my lost geometries of chairs, the board and desks,
Held me tight in symmetries familiar and unchanged.

1 walked behind the desk on which she sometimes
Perched. and wondered if she ever saw, in the corner where I sat,
An ardent  small entanglement of desires, or felt
Just once, the different desperations
From those who willed her rising hem to rise just
That final fraction more. Perhaps she never really
Heard the sighs from Thomas Reese
For whom, it was at times, just all too much.

For one whole year, a single lesson every day,
Then Friday’s glorious double, when we read out loud.
Drawing out my lines, inventing absurd
Inflections to give my voice space
And time to add a hoarse and edgy beat                   
That  would  belie my age
And somehow span the bridgeless space
Between her twenty four and my fourteen.

You read that quite beautifully she’d once sung
Then held my startled gaze forever.
Though my dark skin accommodates no blush, even
Now, certain she could not fail to note the tiny blisterings
Of skin against the choking nylon collar, see
The bitten nails bite the frayed
Weave of grubbed cuffs, and somehow understand.
But I guess, she never knew.

P E Parsons whom I kicked and gouged,
Burnt and beat, a thousand million times that year
Duped and stole then married her.
In the dreams that followed, he forever crushed
His spit-wet fat cigar into the clumsy card I’d made
Laughed slyly as my pencilled kisses parched.
I rose from behind her desk,
Drew in a  deepening breath and left the place,

Relieved to find after forty years,
No spiteful trace of scorched card and tobacco ash

◄ My Shooting Stars By Alice Age 6

Comments

steve mellor

Sun 27th Nov 2011 09:38

Makes me wish I'd gone to a 'mixed' school. Boys only and only male teachers.
Glimpsing the flesh of leg between brown sock and turn-up of trouser is not quite the same as the rising of a hem

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John Coopey

Sat 26th Nov 2011 23:38

I was once in a pub in Glasgow and overhead a bloke about 30 saying to a woman about 45 who used to be his teacher "I fancied you something f*ckin' stinky!". There's poetry!
Enjoyed the memories this roused, Ant.

<Deleted User> (6315)

Fri 25th Nov 2011 23:42



Lovely..what a tale to be told..The men teachers in my High school were awful...

Thoroughly enjoyed the read... :)

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jane wilcock

Fri 25th Nov 2011 20:53

Gosh, is that what it's like for young men? Girls get stuck with loadsa female teachers with not much excitment. Perhaps that's why I did well at school!

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Nick Coleman

Fri 25th Nov 2011 19:39

well done, well written. (and oh for that hem to rise just a little!)how I envy you your Miss Cadogan.

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