Maverick Leopold in the Odor of his Youth

To wonder. �Do I dare?� and, �Do I dare?�
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair�
(They will say: �How his hair is growing thin!�)
--T. S. Eliot, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'

It was in the shadow of my adolescence
Spent picking my snot, and the thick lenses
Of my glasses were twenty years out of style
And shaped like looking glasses, I would smile
Over the less complicated equations in class.
My eighth grade intellect (I turned thirteen last
spring) would find X, cornered, alone,
but if two letters abbreviated what is to be known
were present, I would merely pencil in my name:
Maverick Leopold, in a blank space, my brain
Palpitating, then say �Mr. Smith I am finished�,
Thinking with my age that I couldn�t do this.

I�d sweat in my eighth grade pre-algebra,
It was stuffy after all. The wood wouldn�t breathe, the
Room was not ventilated. Terra sat to my
Left in a dirty brown sweater. Ever since I
Was eleven I had a problem with stink.
I�d stick my nose in my collar to check, thinking
How awful it would be should I have forgotten
To apply my deodorant. I would take a sniff then
And if the sweat was smoldering in my pits
I would excuse myself to the bathroom, get bits
Of soap in my palms, lather my hands, rub them
Under my shoulders, then wipe them on my shirt�s hem.

This was the tradition in my pre-algebra class,
And Terra suspected my dilemma and cruelly passed
Me off as a stinking geek. A big lensed idiot who
Laughed at political jokes and told bad ones himself. Do
All young geniuses start as middle school freaks?
She called me Deodorant when I tried to speak.
Behind me sat Jeremy who failed eighth grade twice
And looked to be twenty. He laughed thrice
At my name and got a girl pregnant one year later.
Jeremy dropped out. Terra dropped out. As for me, fate
Had established my studying time, writing papers on temporal
Mechanics. I got my PhD looked back at my farciful
-------------------------Middle school life and quivered.
There was a day in spring when I came to class,
I didn�t put my nose in my collar, and somehow smelled past
The odor staining my shirt. I sat down with my books,
Thinking about integers. The beastly integers that took
My time from me the evening before in heaping homework.
It was stacked on the kitchen table and I drank tea to perk
Me a little. But in class Terra pronounced instantly �You reek�
When she got a whiff. I was unable to speak,
Petrified, and while all thirty students watched I slunk to
The bathroom. Aloud they gawked at their quirkish classmate who
Smelled like fried grime. I hovered over the sink for fifteen minutes,
Dreading my reappearance at the door. This business
---------------------------------(Being the silent U in laugh)
Of being the butt, the funny nerd twerp
At which to make cheap humor. I walked back to insert
My pride in the cauldron, feeding jiggling ha-sparks.
Terra yelled �Maverick Leopold is now Deodorant Fart!�
In relation to my name. I bawled in my fists
When I made it home to my room. Is
It unfair? Why should time make me tear and sob at
Myself in pity, and instead exist in dignity now that
I have aged ten years? Now and Then? Is that balance
I suppose, while tossing the photo back in the pile, wondering at chance�
Why did I dare disturb the universe now,
And then try to cover the sweat on my brow?

Reviews

[L. Norris]

Ah, accepted! Published April 2008 in Tarnhelm Journal.