Pleasant Arena

Our next prompt was to write a poem about a place that has significance to you. Of course I picked Pleasant Arena. This poem is a huge departure from what I've written in the past. Just trying different ideas.

Everything I know about life I learned at Pleasant Ice Arena

I know from a bottle cap in the vending machine we were forbidden to use
That a cow can go up stairs but not down.
Grasshoppers and spiders can cross-breed.
We call them “sprickets,” and it’s good luck if you squish one
Trying to put your skates on.
“Fungus” and “among us” are good rhymes,
Though I wouldn’t like to divulge where I heard them together.
It takes three toe picks in the ice to dig out the rusted paint
That falls from the ceiling like tetanus confetti.
I found one in shape of a blob once. So did a lot of people.

In the summer I can still smell
The compost site, divided by the parking lot,
And how we would sit on the hill for hours
And guess what people had thrown away.
The fourteen hundred and seventy-seven steps
From the front door to the nearest Bruegger’s
Go by more quickly when you’re holding someone’s hand,
Still cool and somewhat damp from a session of falling.
They go by slowly when he moves to Florida
And you realize the little bastard still has one of your magenta gloves
And it is probably infested with ringworm from being in that bag
That always smelled like bread, in the bad way.

I learned that the more you fall, the less it hurts,
That sometimes there is a God,
But only after a damn good session.
You’ll have better results with the innards of a spricket
Smeared like oil on the sole of your tights.
The other times the only thing you can feel is your blade carving,
In that soft growl, resonating across cement walls,
Making your mark on the world before it is wiped clean by a zamboni.
That doesn’t matter. Just start over again.
The paint on the ceiling restarts its celebration every ninety minutes.

That happiness is in a Snapple bottle
I hid under a yoga mat for a year
And then found this August, and finding out
That I don’t really change all that much.



Unpublished Material, ©2011 by Cali Digre