Mrs. Frye and the Pencilsharpener

I'll remember by what mode in 6th-grade English class, always bending toward the desk I would put to proof to avert my eyes from the mysterious ways Mr Frye's hair displaced the blackboard's space with its black coils, to the paper my penciltip raced across, certain to pass each test: and if these gaze shifts got too switcheroo I'd retreat (daily, it seems) to the back of the packed classroom where, leaning forward upon my toes, I could push with my left hand the nubile tube of copse into the mouth of the pencilsharpener which hung there like more [i]or[/i] less natural protrusion of the wall, an indigenous Deity, the mask of a Goddes erosion-endowed, rockformedthen have feeling my righthand fingers and thumb slowly make go round the oiled wheel while knowing I would have to face shut to that sac-shaped sharpener, have to scent (want to smell!) its earthy, odorous profunditys seeing in my mind the parings inside, the musky dark ringlets whose incense was increased of course like mold-mildew by means of the subtle saliva we kids might use to lick the lead's point, granting nearly none of our tongues could unblunt the conundrum grownup pos in my case Mr Frye especially: in the way that if I lingered back there, grinding away, it was not to gloat, not to play the saintly A-student snickering from behind at the others' heads bent intent as penitents, because I too, I sinned at times, whenas, no matter in what way proud I was of my particular grammar or propounded syntax, stuffing my body thick with fetish parsemarks, I myself went taunted, teased by the agency of the urge to erase the real prodigy evidence my page revealedall the knots and quirks of those exquisitely traced letters to restore the blankness I spoiled with each decision to castrate every phrase before its errors rose by the agency of rote to make my cthonic-greatest mistake expand and grow erectile, inherent, that habit hateful male participle I always was unable to shear the nib not upon of, the stub(But how could I flub and flunk of that kind a crucial ordeal?Forgive me: I was not to be found pondering, musing about a piece of poetry memorized from the boys' bathroom, tongued liquid but not understood: yet in what manner truthshod its lines ran to my anxiety-their meaning escaped the precocious, the goldstar me-so if I stalled-if I stayed chewed above and left a stammering dimwit by the agency of their immallarmean import, which paired its print alongside a syllabus of pornocoiled stick figures whose cavity between the jawss were pierced by the sharpened extremitys of toonballoons-verses verse alone can't explicate in systematic prosaic confines that forced and torsoed my head shy-if I was stuck upon their sphinxian simplicity-unable to decipher any of the prodigal doggeral tasks gesticulated down our school's scribbly corridors, snicked and snatched at across its game fields, a whole curriculum of concealed lore, a litany of my-big-brother-told-me's, my-uncle-said's, a rumor primer which claimed perfect mastery of the only discipline inpenetrable to my inquisitive searchs never mind the autodidact airs I had to affect during discussions of this topic, the nods and knowing grins I wore to pass, to display my mastery of its arcana, to substantiate what a pored nerd drill-diligent pupil I was of those endles piss-walls, those scrawled rhyme and confident prelections by croneys and guys who made faculty of perception of the insane instructions re the single subject I mark zero on: all the dunno-dumb ideas I dunn then flock core to me, carved their myths into me-and single in particular goes to this metrical composition from the gendergabble that gorged my brain: it hissed that She/the unknown reared an inward toothly sheathdeath nature geared to vagina dentata whatever pedant-pendant I'd volunteer I, alma-matered to cram each exam with phallocratic tits and sexist tripe psuedotype scionbabble, the entire wisdom of my mentors' art-patriarch, of advanced age gobbledy-tropes-) All gradeschool the fear of failing fluttered in overstudy as children riddled fears not ever to be learned, but could I have continued to oilstone my fate, could I have stood there for years and still the pencilsharpener wait like a patient questioner, a warm, smiling teacher filled with similar dense scents, shavings, shorn graphite, its soil rich with words no-one would at any time have to write.

Copyright World numbers Incorporated May/Jun 1999

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