Monday, December 5, 2011

Lunch

Lunch, George Tooker, 1964, Columbus Museum of Art

Lunch


This is what I remember.
Head down tuna surprise
Sweet tea and chocolate
Pudding-like substance
And then that terrifying
Glance up – too much
Too many I can’t even
Can’t even can’t even…

I sit at my desk
unwrapping
ham and cheese
and Ivanhoe.
Falling into
Rebecca’s world
I eat in peace.

The Bug, 11th Grade, 1980
Man that is some serious hair!

This is a Magpie Tale

25 comments:

  1. My dear Bug
    ,How splendid you look and how vividly you recall HIGH SCHOOL


    and I never even attempted Ivanhoe.....!

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  2. Wow! That IS some seriously big hair. I hope you won. ;)

    S

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  3. HUUUGE Haair! Fantastic! Poem goes very werll with that picture as well.

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  4. I can so relate to this one Bug....but I think that photo is adorable!!

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  5. it was definitely the time of big hair.

    we were allowed to eat outside on the campus so that's where I always ate, sitting with a small group of friends under a tree.

    nice poem.

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  6. I enjoyed reading during my lunch hours too! Still do!

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  7. Great post! I am so loving the 80s hair, mine was pretty 'big' too:)

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  8. I SHOULD have read during lunch
    love the hair....

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  9. You have inspired me to write about my school lunch breaks with your poem...so good!

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  10. Can identify with the poem, and like it,especially the first half.
    My poofy hair always got tied back!

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  11. nice...i know that escape well..books have definitely played that role for me...tuna surprise is never a good thing...the surprise gets me every time...smiles.

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  12. Really liked the poem - wonderful capturing of a place, a time.

    The hair I'm not so sure about...

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  13. The lunch room horrified me. Your words brought back all my anxieties about lunch situations at school.

    That is way serious hair, girlfriend!

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  14. "And then that terrifying Glance up – too much Too many I can’t even Can’t even can’t even… "

    Oh, good girl! The broken record sound ~ perfect!

    What a satisfying bit of conflict resolution you have captured here. Poets sometimes forget that conflict is as essential to a good poem as it is to a novel.

    And the hair, since you invite comment about it, I so coveted your naturally curly hair 10 years earlier, big wild Afro-like ringlets on my fine, flat, straight, parted-down-the-middle blonde anti-war-demonstrating, acid-dropping, pot-brownie-eating head that I braided it wet in tiny Medusa-like braids every week so it would dry big and kinky. The grass is always greener.

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  15. I'm still envious of big hair. Seriously envious. Yes, still. Your poem is a thing of beauty and timelessness.

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  16. This both convinces and moves me utterly. Well done.

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  17. Oh, I have been there. And I call it "GBH" Great Big Hair. Although, yours looks natural - I spent an hour every morning poofing mine up and up and up - only to fall flat by the end of the day. I was shy too...

    Loved this.

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  18. Oh no - the hair was NOT natural! It was a perm gone wild. Sigh. Thank goodness after about 10 more years of perms I finally gave up on those!

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  19. Perms.. yes. They were my torture too!

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  20. I love your reference to the Wyeth...I remember feeling just this way...

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  21. A beautifully written, imaginative take on this week's prompt...

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  22. Safety at the desk! I loooove your hair and your wide-open eys waiting for life!

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Thanks for stopping by - I'd love to hear what you have to say!

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