David Huddle

In the George Wythe High School auditorium,
at “The Boys’ Beauty Contest” in 1958,
I played to the rowdy crowd

as best I could but got only nervous laughs,
a couple of jeers, and mostly
tepid applause.

But here’s what I remember–how serious
Mary Sawyers was helping me
put on my make-up,

Nancy Umberger stuffing my bra with gym socks,
Sarah Parsons grieving over how wrong
my ballet flats

looked with that dress.  T.W. Alley,
our All-State tackle who’d got
his front teeth knocked

out that year–a 260 pound bawdy slut
who turned her back to the audience
and shook it–won,

and every single one of us teenage queens
knew T. deserved it, but still–
and I don’t know why nobody

ever talked about it–backstage, us boys
changing back to the sex
we were used to

and even the girls who’d helped change us–
we were all kind of quiet
and sad.

 

David Huddle‘s most recent books are Nothing Can Make Me Do This, a novel, and Black Snake at the Family Reunion, a collection of poems.  He’s a native of Ivanhoe, Virginia, and he makes his home in Burlington, Vermont.