miss zablocki’s tits
my 3rd grade teacher, Miss Zablocki, would stand behind you and gently lower her tits onto your shoulders, placing them there it seemed, two warm sleepy kittens against your neck, to encourage wonder and confusion. would tit A slide down your chest like pizza dough? would tit B shift and locate a bra- less nipple against nervous skin? would they smell funny, like sour milk? when would they lift off gradually or with a snap? did every kid in class, boy or girl, get the same pair of presents? we never got answers. we never talked about it. we held her in awe and mild fear. an angry Miss Zablocki would swat her hand on your desk so hard you jumped. if it hurt her too much she’d use your hand and smack it on the desk instead. whatever you’d done to piss her off you never did again. sometimes, to get your attention, she’d force the entire class to stare at the black board where she would draw a giant chalk circle that zeroed in (a concentric spiral) like an old fashioned Hollywood special effect implying ‘vertigo’. you’d become discombobulated, nauseous and woozy. in better spirits she’d tell us about her travels abroad. (i think she went alone). floating like balsa wood in the Dead Sea or playing canasta on a card table in the Great Salt Lake. she maintained a seated position because the salt was so buoyant. (this was hard to picture.) she had dark cherry lip-sticked lips, bottom lip larger than upper, with a clown-like exaggeration effective as either smile or frown. when she castanet-snapped her fingers the flesh under her arm jiggled like jello. (we covered our eyes.) she was the 1st exotic character i knew. her wild flame-dyed hair, trumpeting alto and exaggerated East European hand gestures were all first-time new for me. she walked to school on cold days, wearing a loose, partially buttoned, billowing blouse, her Spain-red hair writhing like Medusa snakes as her long-legged high-heeled tick tock steps echoed on the pavement. big loud women have scared the shit out of me ever since. 3rd grade changes you forever.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
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