Charlotte’s Peg Robarchek is one of the most entertaining and engaging readers I’ve ever heard, as well as a poet of great imagination and wit.
You can hear her on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Vin Master, a New York-style wine bar in Atherton Mills, 2000 South Boulevard, #610, as she reads from her debut collection, “Inventing Sex” (Main Street Rag, $14), which includes the following poem:
THE “F” WORD
The thrill of it,
the first time I hear it.
I recognize his voice
on the phone. He’s the kind of boy
who looks right dangling a cigarette
from his lip, even at thirteen. The kind
who radiates threat when he passes
in the lunchroom,
if you are the kind of girl
who reads a book a week
and turns in her homework on time.
He speaks my name and uses
the word I kow instinctively
cannot be reported to my mother.
I hang up, take his word
to my bedroom and close
the door. Fondling
it in my head, exploring
the boundaries of new territory
I will need no compass
to find.
.
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