WIP: Saltian, Sex
From section 2, Childhood, of Saltian
Sex
By Alice Shapiro
A summer bungalow arouses secret lusts
as sunbeams peek through tattered curtains
and a three-year-old, crumpled under cotton covers
titters at her father's work-mate's muscles
and sun-bronzed arms that taunt and tickle her.
Desire forms and a sense of future
different than the entertaining toy
or a parent's unconditional comfort.
One day in a grown time
this same woman knelt to weed a garden.
A shadow blocked her light
as two bright eyes
peered down.
The neighbor's son at seven
silent and enticed
flowered.
Critique: Responsive Writing
Sex
By Bryan Borland
The parents, denying it in themselves,
were horrified to find it in their children.
--John Steinbeck, from East of Eden
He discovered his body in the bathtub,
toy ships bobbing with tides of pulling and prodding
in company of rose-faced others who refused
to acknowledge how the arch of the sun
can touch a child's skin in the early dawn.
It is the shameful unspoken,
schooled out like fantasies of girls
in red cloaks or ginger-laced gluttony.
When the wolves bayed at fourteen
and were allowed in again, his eyes drifted
past the childhood relic:
a yellow boat, at peace
on a shelf warmed
by natural light;
his mid-morning
heat.
#####
Bryan Borland is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Little Rock AR and the owner of Sibling Rivalry Press. His first book, My Life as Adam, was one of only five collections of poetry included on the American Library Association's "Over the Rainbow" list of notable LGBT-themed books published in 2010. He is the founding editor of Assaracus, the only print journal in the world dedicated exclusively to the poetry of gay men. His work has appeared in Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Breadcrumb Scabs, Referential Magazine, vox poetica, Ganymede, and Velvet Mafia, among others. For more about Bryan, visit his website.
Posted by Annmarie at 8/7/2011 12:18 AM 
Categories: Our writers, Work in Progress, Coming soon
Tags: WIP Saltian Alice Shapiro Bryan Borland sex growing up
Categories: Our writers, Work in Progress, Coming soon
Tags: WIP Saltian Alice Shapiro Bryan Borland sex growing up
With regard to the poem, Sex, I am attempting to contain my disgust. Having spent my professional life woring to protect children from sexual abuse and its effects with different levels of success, I find prurience, disguised as art, repugnant.
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Wow. I understand Jean's comment out of context. I did not read the poem the same way. I read nothing in the adult characters that would suggest that they are aware of anything sexual in the two scenarios. Rather, I think Alice is suggesting that there are subliminal cues that much later become sexual but cannot be processed that way by the children. The title, then, may be what is offensive in the poem rather than the content. A different title, say "Beginning Adulthood" or "Silent Seeds" or some such might get the same idea across with less offense for some readers. Just my thoughts at the moment.
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I find this poem offensive. The following is not meant to be an instruction on how the poem should be read, simply an explanation of my own reading.
For me, failure begins with the poem’s title and placement in the manuscript. Why “Sex”? Especially in a section devoted to “Childhood”? This poses an immediate obstacle, and I now approach the poem with a sense of dread. A different title would set the stage differently, although changing the title will not salvage the poem.
The first line, which is the poem’s first opportunity to deny the more sinister aspects of its title, sets the scene in a “summer bungalow”, uses the verb “arouses”, and directs the reader’s attention to “secret lusts”. This is the language of romance novels, grossly misplaced in a section titled “Childhood”.
The poem turns even more grotesque when it writes a three-year-old girl into this setting and places her in bed with an adult man. The child “titters at her father’s work-mate’s muscles/and sun-bronzed arms that taunt and tickle her.”
Why emphasize the man’s “sun-bronzed arms”? Why, in a poem otherwise devoid of physical description, is it important to describe the man’s bare skin? And why, with such a wealth of words to choose from, am I told that the child “titters”? Given the poem’s other purposeful references to sex, the rude term hidden in the word’s syllables seems equally purposeful. Why use the phrase “work-mate”? How about “coworker”? Instead, the child is in bed with a “mate”. An accumulation of sexual language, leading up to the suggestion that the girl experiences “desire”. By this point, I am thoroughly appalled.
The second stanza is less flagrant, but the first stanza has already set the tone. Again, a child is “enticed” toward sexual maturity by an adult.
Part of the poem’s failure is its inability to defy alternate readings. Ms. Shapiro must have been aware that readers might perceive the scenes as unwholesome. But the poem does not offer any guidance for interpretation. It does not address any moral implications. It proceeds as if unaware that interactions between children and adults are sometimes monstrously abusive, as if it should be immune from comparison with such monstrosities.
An argument to counter my reading is as follows: if I find something unwholesome in these scenes, then I must be borrowing from an experience outside the poem. I might concede the point, if the poem’s topic was a less dangerous one, if there were fewer harrowing experiences to borrow. In my opinion, when a poem presumes to describe children in sexual language, it must acknowledge that such descriptions are potentially predatory. At a minimum, it must address the conflict such descriptions pose for a reader, and for the world. Failure to do so renders the poem utterly useless to me.
Up to this point, I have been happy to add my voice to WIP: Saltian. However, I cannot support the publication of this poem.
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This poem confuses me for a different reason. The first section is in the present tense -- arouses, titters, forms. Then in the latter section, the poet switches to past tense -- knelt, blocked, peered, flowered. But it seems that the 3-year-old is now the same woman "in a grown time." Am I reading this right? The present tense is used when she was 3, then past tense when she was an adult? Is there some mysterious reversal of time, because the first part in the present tense makes us think it is happening now, and the second section seems a remembered scene? Or are they different people, poetically called "this same woman" as if we are talking about an archetype, not the actual same person? Hmmm... now I'm really confused. I understood the construction to mean that it was the same person, with role reversal, first the innocent feeling her first vague stirring of sexuality, and then later, the object of such feelings. I do not say the "cause" of the sexual awakening, just the "object," because I am not convinced that the adults in this poem are provacateurs. I did not read that the man was in bed with the girl. As I read it, I thought the girl was under the covers, perhaps remembering an encounter with the man, but not necessarily an improper one. I would agree that this is a sensitive subject, and some ambiguities in the text could provoke strong feelings. For that reason, I would recommend a re-write. Not because poems need to explain everything, but because in this case I think some poor phrasing is leading the reader astray from the poet's intended subject into very distracting places.
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First let me say congratulations to Ms. Shapiro. It takes good poetry to bring out such strong responses; good poetry polarizes-- good poetry makes you feel deep down in your guts.
Clearly there is something of value here then. From Bryan's (a poet of no mean reputation himself, in my humble opinion) glowing response, to Rae and Jean's (two women for whom I have tremendous respect as writers) vehement rebuttals. There must be more than one way to read this piece, and, from the good bit I've experienced so far from Ms. Shapiro's Saltian, I find it hard to believe that her intention was to repulse readers with favorable descriptions of childhood abuse.
To me, on first read, what this poem addresses is the awareness of sexual possibility. The three-year-old is seeing in her father's companion the woman she might become--not in the sense of sharing his bed, but rather in the feminine shape with developed muscles and curves which will some day be hers. It's an alluring possibility, even to a child of three. Then we see the same child, grown, now an object of desire herself to a seven-year-old boy who is obviously dealing with his own confused ideas about adulthood and sex.
I agree with Jean and Rae that some of the language can be misleading--more overtly sexual than childlike--in a way possibly Ms. Shapiro did not intend. I can see how the title can be misconstrued, and I like Stan's suggestions of something less outright... maybe "Seeds," or "Beginnings." Words like "taunt" and "enticed" also strike me as possibly too adult-ly sexual for a poem about childhood.
On a side note, I very much like the way Bryan gives his own interpretation on the same theme, and I think he does so successfully, nodding to the verboten nature of the topic in passing, and not apologizing for it. I don't think Ms. Shapiro should, either, but merely clarify with her language the images she means to convey.
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