Fair cop, Max, re 'pak' and Doug, re mashup. I suppose I thought I could
slip it in as a 21st c narrator looking back. Re State, I cut 'school' to
avoid its overuse in the original but I can see it could pop back in here.
Bill
On Thursday, 21 July 2016, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Fun, Bill.
>
> But: “East Ivanhoe State’ sounds like a small US college somewhere (I know
> it’s not, but). And was ‘mash-up’ a term back then?
>
> Doug
> > On Jul 19, 2016, at 7:13 AM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> > This is an expanded version of an earlier poem I think I submitted here
> > called The Burner. Now it's a sort of companion piece I suppose.
> >
> > Bill
> >
> >
> > East Ivanhoe State's Tuckshop lit up our lives.
> > A drab building adjoining the library when shut,
> > it sprang to colourful life each recess and lunchtime.
> >
> > Bright boxes of pink musk sticks; yellow cartons
> > of flat twelve-inch liquorice straps, a penny a pop,
> > longitudinally peelable, so six for the price of one.
> >
> > Chocolate Royals we smashed on our foreheads
> > before easing off cracked chocolate to reveal
> > marshmallow- white or pink - on a crisp jam biscuit.
> >
> > And what about local mash-ups like 'favouries':
> > rolled-up buttered soft pikelets, two a penny.
> > Cut sandwiches from home - huh! No competition.
> >
> > Summer treats were Sunnyboys: sweet orange
> > cordial in tetrahedral paks, also available frozen,
> > the better for lasting longer, but forcing choices.
> >
> > Do you suck out the flavour as the frozen bit melts
> > knowing you will leave tasteless pale ice at the end
> > or do you belt your Sunnyboy on a Tuckshop rail,
> >
> > allowing an even mixture of flavour and ice crunch?
> > Or for true aficionados: wait, slurp up ice, let it drop
> > back to pak, slurp some more until all that's left
> >
> > is impossibly superlative concentrated cold orange.
> > And then the ripping apart of soggy silver foil;
> > who had a 'lucky'? The magic printed blue words
> >
> > 'free tetra pak' inside entitled you to suck again.
> > If you dipped out, and The Burner had already
> > been raked through, search for unripped paks.
> >
> > Classrooms were the places for skill acquisition,
> > gyms and ovals for physical jerks but for sheer
> > sensuality, it's hard to go past The Tuckshop.
> >
> > bw
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask] <javascript:;>
> https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations
> 2 (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>
> Automobile Accident
>
> Not finding where the flowers were
> he seized a tree.
>
> Lorine Niedecker
>
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