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Enjoyable, for me, with its links to my own boyhood and NZ school. slurp, slurp. and all that juvenile connoisseurship... I see why you write ‘pak’ but I’d put it in quotes, first time at least. So The Burner is now sequel to this…? fair enough. Max On Jul 19, 2016, at 6:13, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> 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