Pak is a tricky word here
On 20/07/2016 00:56, Max Richards wrote:
> 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
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