Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

with a loud snap. “That’s her,” she says. “My first student. I mean, peer learning partner.”
    I look at the neatly typewritten form and read:
    NAME:
Doris Jean (“D.J.”) Amberson

SCHOOL:
East Harlem Vocational High School, NYC

GRADE:
9

WHY DO YOU WANT A PEER LEARNING PARTNER?
My mama and daddy and especially Grandma Doris say I

am not learning bo-diddley at this run-down overcrowded

excuse of a school.

SPECIAL INTERESTS:
    Here there was something written but scribbled over. Underneath the scribble, in a different handwriting, it said:
    Stuck-up Priss Doris Jean has not one interest that’s
special, thank you now go away! XOXOXOX S&D
    “Fascinating, isn’t it? I wonder who S and D are!” Jess says. She closes her binder and beams, looking genuinely pleased. “This is going to be a CHALLENGE!”
    Jess drains the last of her drink, creating a tiny milk-foam mustache on her lip. “I’d better go. I’m supposed to meet her during her lunch period and her school is way uptown.”
    “Bonne chance!”
I say, handing her a napkin. We’re such good pals she doesn’t even blink, she just wipes the foam off her mouth and looks at me.
    “Good luck to you, too, Fee.” I’m glad Jess has stopped yelling at me about this Matthew thing. I guess she realizes I’m beyond help.
    Kitten Directive Number Eighty-six: Stand By Your Littermates, No Matter What!
    Jess smiles. “No matter what happens,” she says, like she heard what I was thinking, “he is one lucky Dawg to have YOU interested in HIM. Remember that!”
    And Kitten Kornbluth trots out to do battle, binder tucked under her arm.
    Like a milk mustache,

Faint traces of you persist.

Love leaves evidence.
    To be technically correct, a haiku is supposed to make some reference to nature. The cherry blossoms, the melting frost, the baby frogs peeping foolishly in the swamp until the crane gobbles them up—these are supposed to let the reader know what time of year it is. That is the tradition, anyway, and perhaps it is relevant and meaningful in Japan, where the weather turns from winter to spring, summer to fall, providing many opportunities for haiku poets to sprinkle seasonal references on their work, like blueberries on Cheerios.
    Here in New York City, there are only two seasons. Coat and no-coat. Some would argue that there are brief jacket seasons in between and that these happy, mild weeks provide the best opportunities for attractively layered outfits. True, but these weeks are fleeting and purely transitional in nature. If you’re counting actual seasons, we’re talking two and only two.
    What does this mean for New York poets working in the haiku form? References to coat and no-coat are certainly possible, but in my experience they lack the symbolic oomph of the blossom, the frog, and the crane. Variations, like sock season versus pedicure season, only make matters worse. Mr. Frasconi, though initially confused by my persistent questions on this subject, did finally come to agree with me. So I don’t trouble myself with the seasonal tradition when writing haiku. Counting syllables is enough entertainment for me.
    “ONE-two-three-four-five, ONE-two-three-four-five—
bleeping blintzsky Kremlin bleepsky
!” A stream of furious Russian swearwords carries through the door of the practice room.
    Often, when I’m looking for a quiet place to write, or think, or frantically OBSESS about some Matthew-related issue, I go down to the basement of the Pound, where there are a dozen small, not-quite-soundproof rooms used by the musically inclined Free Children for practicing. Even if the rooms are all in use, for some reason I find the narrow, fluorescent-lit hallway with its scratchy synthetic carpet an inviting place to camp out. Plus, Kat’s almost always down here practicing, and I never tire of hearing her swear in Russian.
    That’s right, quiet Kat! Cusses like a merchant sailor on the Baltic Sea, like a KGB agent who can’t get a signal on