Education by Sugar

In elementary school we all learned the basics:
sticky sweetness is a virtue.
We sat in rows of wooden desks,
carving our initials
next to older siblings’
then newly discovered profanity.
In those years you were always the teacher’s pet
because of your sugary dimples and Shirley Temple
curls.
I was the one who felt the cane
when they tried to beat me until
my pores oozed honey,
filling up jars of golden sap,
which the headmaster would slather
on his thick slabs of home-made rye bread
on slow Monday afternoons,
wolfing it down by quarters
with a bottle of beer cradled in his lap,
listening to Italian arias
sung by sweet German divas
with bells around and their wrists
and lead rings around their toes,
weighting them to the solid oak stage while they rehearsed
in hopes of floating away on opening night,
rising above the crowd of suits and ties
which had two days ago been selling
sausages and sweet rolls at the market place,
chatting with its wives,
who rolled their eyes at the rising price of sugar
and wiped the frosting out of their sons’ dimples
with fat, spit-wet fingers.