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]> 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
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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
