Traditionally I read a boarding school poem
because I went to a boarding school in the North Hills
of Pittsburgh, Vincentian Academy for Girls,
with the nuns where I spent four tortured, and deeply unhappy
years, but got a lot of great writing material.
This is about the spiritual world versus the secular world,
and it's called "An Afternoon in the World."
An afternoon in the world.
I remember how the nuns spit it out, hissing,
the word 'secular' as Rosie and I slithered down the hill
to the shopping mall, and gorged ourselves
on candy, hot chocolates, forbidden movies,
among soft-lit carpeted boutiques.
Escaping evening Rosary again, we
descended to North Hills Shopping Center
to rise on long, shining escalators
into a parade of costume jewelry, evening
wear, and perfume atomizers.
After days of the word 'discipline' and 'spiritual,'
after the dry prayers at breakfast, at lunch,
after choir practice, piano practice, forced study hall,
devotions in chapel at Angelus and Vespers,
we hurried through squadrons of clerks into mountains
of stacked dry goods, draping paisley shawls and strings
of pearls over our dull, gray uniforms.
Debbing crept to sheen, canoe, jungle gardenia
onto our wrists, slipping into slingback leather pumps
with stiletto heels, pulling long, silky nylons and garters
up our secretly shaved legs.
Where are you now, Rosie?
And where are those fuzzy sweaters, electroplated rings,
the orange yarn we bought and spooled around our boyfriend's
class rings before we hung them from our necks,
the bright pink polish we slathered over them
in a sticky heap, and the lipstick with silver flecks
that tasted of rainwater?
Where are those tortoiseshell compacts, the mascara ones,
as if a wand and a sweater could turn us into models, and not
those gray blazered schoolgirls in Oxford shoes,
and high socks?
Running back up the road, hugging
paper sacks of merchandise, running hard
having stayed too long, running so as not to miss supper,
and holding that taste of the secular beneath our tongues,
like those bright-colored candy rings that we favored,
lemon, watermelon, lime, and cherry, those Lifesavers.