♥

I read a poem at a writers conference/competition for high school students that used baseball as an extended metaphor for sex. It was truly high art. I had to read this poem in a small group setting where it would be critiqued by other high school students and a writer-mentor. We were in a small auditorium. I read the poem at the podium. In the middle of it, a nine-months-pregnant high school girl stood up and shouted at me that I was full of bullshit and that my poem was offensive. (It was.) She said I didn’t know anything about sex. (She was right.) But the girls from my high school that were attending with me were tough girls. They were the girls who put the tip of their eyeliner into their lighter before they put it on. They wore denim jackets and chased dudes who drove loud cars. Sometimes they smoked and drank. And they liked me. So they stood up and shouted back at the pregnant girl. And it almost became a riot. My first public poetry reading almost resulted in blood shed.