Third Place Winner, February 2002 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Third Place Winner, February 2002

RELATIVITY
Brett Hursey
(The Critical Poet)

The first time you say the word “fuck”
in front of your family, your sister's
pushing garden peas beneath her mashed

potatoes, the Methodist church
down the street rings six o'clock,
and your mother asks, “Did you change

the grade on your report card?”
That's when your mouth opens and the word
just happens -- you say, “Why the fuck...?”

And time slows down;
stretching out so you can see --
in perfect, slow motion,

Six-Million-Dollar-Man detail --
your mother's back stiffen, and the weary
disappointment your dad's been distilling

in his eyes for the past two or three
lifetimes. And in some useless part
of your mind, you wonder if Einstein

included the “fuck” factor in his Theory
of Relativity -- how time tends to slow down
around black holes, women who ask,

“How do you really feel about me?”
after sex, and tenth graders who say
the word “fuck” in front of their mothers

after forging fraudulent report card grades.
Somehow your mind can't resist taking
advantage of the temporary time warp,

tracing the carbon of the moment
into your memory the way you traced over
your algebra grade -- dividing and rounding

the D's hump into a respectable B.
And suddenly you have the urge to grab
your sister's lump of pea ridden potatoes,

slap it on your back, climb to the top
of the Methodist church, and ring the bells,
ring the fucking bells until time loses interest
and passes you by.