Gerry LaFemina: Last Report Card before High School

In eighth grade I didn’t ride to school each morning
so never got to listen
to shockjock deejays filling the airways
with sexual innuendo. Not that I needed it
what with hormones making even the plainest girls
in Sister Mary’s math class more desirable.
I didn’t get to see the accident my mother talked about
after work that one day in 1982,
the one in which she swore she watched a body
laid in the back of an ambulance, sheet over its head.
How obsessed we were with sex & death. With cool, too,
though back then I didn’t
kiss my date to the eighth grade square dance
goodnight despite having dreamt about it
for weeks, how her lips might taste of the cherry lip balm
I watched her apply like lipstick after lunch
in the back of the room where we sat, square kids
faking it. Do I have to say I never kissed her?
Sure, I could solve for X but still nothing
seemed to add up. That was the sum of my knowledge.
My whole life then was about what I wasn’t doing.
My whole life then was about what I wanted to do.
Saturday night television past midnight all ripped bodices,
knife-wielding psychopaths. My Sunday morning bed
all sweat. All mourning. My grief
a by-product of adrenaline & pheromones.
I moaned internally through mass, those classmates
in their jeans & casually enticing smiles, the shy
waves when I walked past with my wolf eyes,
my greed, lust, & envy. I didn’t go to penance.
I didn’t tell anyone about my secret thoughts.
I never called the radio station to make a request
for Suzette or Jill or Stephanie. I could tell you
what I did, but it was mundane, embarrassing,
the way thirteen always is with its acne &
body odor & those surprising, uncontrollable boners,
so why bother. How did some classmates
manage to make it look easy? What user manual
did they have their hands on? I don’t know. I didn’t study;
I didn’t fail. Never once—not math, not science, not language arts.
All my successes, though, were academic. I may have gotten an A
in social studies, but I didn’t pass social norms
& there’s no summer school for that, just July nights
with no air conditioner & Meatloaf seeing paradise
by the dashboard light. Heaven seemed far away.
I didn’t care. I didn’t care. At least, I kept telling myself that.
~~~

Gerry LaFamina is a poet, writer and musician who teaches at Frostburg State University.

Copyright 2025 Gerry LaFemina