The Geography of Girlhood Read online

  at the ferry dock

  and if he sees Bobby anywhere near me,

  he’ll shoot him,

  he swears to God,

  he will.

  The Thing About Boats

  This is the thing about boats.

  You meet people out there

  on the water

  that you never normally would

  on land.

  People on boats

  are usually

  swimming between one place

  and another,

  the past or the future,

  this body of land

  or that one.

  Being at sea

  is being somewhere

  in the middle of things.

  Being at sea

  is being everywhere

  and nowhere

  all at once.

  Marlene

  I was on my way back home when I met Marlene.

  She turned to me on the ferry boat,

  a stranger of foreign proportions,

  somebody’s out-of-town guest.

  Isn’t it beautiful here? she said.

  I’d had so much beauty in my life

  I was practically hungover from it.

  The sea, looking like lava and spittle,

  careened out behind us.

  Marlene went on to say she was recovering

  from lowa and alcoholism,

  and I noted that she was too doped-up on salt water

  to think straight.

  I could get used to a place like this,

  she said, and I told her how it was:

  the deer you kill just driving into town,

  the rain that ruins your birthday parties,

  the mothers who become your ex-mothers

  almost immediately after you can walk.

  Marlene didn’t seem to care;

  she wore a charmed smile,

  a dubious track record,

  and she was high on the promise of the place.

  Look out there, she said,

  grabbing one of my tired arms

  and spinning me west.

  With my pupils smaller

  than they had been in months,

  she pointed out

  that the sea, on this summer day,

  was a blanket of light

  and that she, Marlene, was ready

  to have her days filled with light like that.

  I stood beside her,

  a little changed and unchanged,

  barely even caring that my cheeks were getting burned,

  that my hair was tangling itself beyond extraction

  into hers.

  Home to the Pocket

  I leap rivers and mountains,

  I float across the platter of night

  to reach my house, the other state

  still fresh on my hands.

  I’ve only been gone four days

  but when I arrive, my father hugs me hard

  and my sister tells me I’m a jerk

  and my stepmother is gasping like a fish,

  from panic and maybe liquor, and I am

  back in the pocket,

  sixteen and still my father’s girl,

  the sweet hard star of his hand

  upon mine, the wide planks of sky

  filling my eye.

  Lost Warnings

  By the time I get home, I’ve been grounded for two

  months and my sister has already found out where I’ve

  been and with whom.

  I could have warned you about him, but you wouldn’t

  have listened to me anyway, she says.

  Yes, I would have, I say, not sure if I mean it.

  Are you kidding? You’re too busy being you to ever

  listen to me.

  I stare at her.

  How could she not know that all I ever wanted was to

  listen to her stupid warnings? How could she not know

  that I was desperate for every tall tale she had to tell?

  How come families are full of people that have no clue

  how they make each other feel?

  Radio Silence

  I called Jenny today

  and told her I miss her.

  She said, It’s about time, you big lame-ass

  and then made me promise

  that the second

  I’m un-grounded,

  we’re going record shopping.

  As for my stepbrother,

  he hasn’t said one word to me

  since I got home.

  Tacos

  Last night I sat down next to Spencer

  and watched an entire episode

  of Star Trek with him

  and when it was over,

  I said, That was good

  and he got up and left the room

  like I wasn’t ever even there.

  So tonight, after I found my globe

  sitting on my bed

  with a note from him that said,

  I don’t want this anymore,

  I went to the kitchen and

  made him our favorite food

  and went into his room

  handed him seven tacos on a plate

  and walked out.

  All I can think

  is that if he doesn’t want me back now,

  he never will.

  The Thing About Telescopes

  The stars are out in full bloom tonight,

  so while everyone sleeps,

  I bring my dad’s telescope out of the garage

  and point it up to the sky.

  What they don’t tell you about telescopes, though,

  is that they make your eyes hurt

  from the squint and the strain

  and that no matter how much you adjust and focus,

  it’s still hard to see the stars

  you came out there to see.

  Maybe telescopes weren’t made to bring you closer

  to what’s up there, after all.

  Maybe telescopes were made to help you realize

  that the stars will always be far away

  and maybe that’s part

  of what makes them so beautiful.

  Bacon and Eggs

  When I get up the next morning,

  Susan has mock-scrambled-eggs

  and Fakin’ Bacon waiting for me

  and she says she got Dad to agree

  I could go see Denise.

  Then she tells me that

  she ran away once

  when she was a girl,

  but it was for three weeks

  not just three days.

  It’s funny—I never imagined

  my stepmother as a “girl” before,

  only as the lady

  who moved into my house

  without asking,

  but I guess everyone’s

  got another version of themselves

  living inside them,

  you just don’t get to see it

  all the time.

  Visitor’s Center

  Susan drops me off at the visitor’s center

  and tells me she’ll be back in half an hour.

  It’s weird but I kind of want her to stay

  because I have no idea what my best friend

  is going to be like or act like

  but then after a few minutes

  out walks Denise.

  I can’t say she looks great

  but she doesn’t look awful,

  she’s just not a whole lot

  like the girl I grew up with,

  but then again, she’d bagged and buried

  that version of herself

  a long time ago.

  As she walks towards me,

  I realize maybe sometimes things aren’t meant

  to go back to what they were before,

  and as Denise hugs me hello,

  it’s a new thing and an old one

  and that’s just how it is

  and it’s
good.

  Dear Denise

  After we get home, I stand out in the yard

  watching the rain bear down on our hometown.

  I imagine you not in the hospital but instead

  in Mexico, climbing the pyramids

  and living to tell about it.

  I imagine your sunburn is deepening, its pink landscape

  spreading across your arms and shoulders.

  You are taking to the pyramids on all fours,

  overdosing on that great, triangular height.

  I think of you nearing the top,

  the way those ancient stones must feel,

  the atoms of heat tittering around you.

  I imagine you opening yourself up to the world,

  to storms and pyramids,

  to all these small, immaculate dangers

  that make up our lives.

  Home Safe

  Tonight is my dad’s birthday and

  Susan made turkey spaghetti

  (somewhere between a vegan

  and red meat meal).

  When we all sit down,

  my dad holds up his mug of beer

  and makes a toast, something mushy

  about how he loves us all

  and he always will

  and he’s glad we’re all home safe.

  Then he gets up and goes around the table

  and kisses Susan full on the mouth

  and dips her like they’re on the dance floor

  and my sister says, People! Please!

  Spencer and I crack up

  and he gives me the tiniest little smile.

  How we all came together,

  I have no idea, but however it did,

  it happened,

  like a miracle of science,

  of chemistry or biology,

  we came together

  and we stayed.

  For a Minute

  A new guy moved into our neighborhood

  and my sister says I can have him.

  He’s too young for her

  even though he’s cute.

  I see him outside his house doing chores

  today when I’m walking the dogs

  down to the beach.

  She was right.

  He is cute.

  Cuter than cute.

  He gives me a wave and

  my heart thumps

  and I start imagining

  everything that could happen;

  our whole story unfolds

  in four seconds flat.

  Isn’t it strange the places on the map

  your heart can take you?

  And then you figure out

  sometimes it’s okay to stay still for a while,

  you don’t have to go everywhere all at once,

  you can see a boy

  and you can love him for a minute

  and maybe it’s real and maybe it’s not

  but sometimes all you have to do is

  wave back and

  keep going.

  Shoreline

  I keep going

  all the way down to the shoreline.

  You’d think the dogs would love it here,

  the way the salt kisses the stones,

  but something scares them

  about the way the waves

  recede and return

  out and back in again.

  I take my mother’s globe

  out of my backpack,

  the globe that’s been given from her to me

  and from me to my stepbrother

  and now back to me again.

  I take aim and throw it out into the sea

  and it seems like for a second

  the dogs might swim after it

  but they don’t.

  I stand there watching it

  and after a while it starts drifting out

  farther and farther and I know now

  I’ll never see her again

  and it took me a while to figure out

  that’s not good or bad

  it’s just the way

  it is.

  On My Arm

  I am back in my hometown. I am eating biscuits at the

  café, I’m writing a novel on my arm. This is the first

  part of Chapter 1, near my wrist. On the way to break-

  fast, I see a white horse, its knees buckling into the

  pasture. It’s summer again and the clamor for shellfish

  is on; the tide’s out and birds and businessmen both are

  up to their elbows in sand. It’s so postcard-perfect here

  that I’m building a tolerance for beauty. Things I hate,

  like bird shit and link sausage, flatbed trucks and

  tattooed forearms, even they seem charmed. At the

  beach, as the gulls get luckier than the grocers, I think

  of the white horse fallen down, the fingers of water

  that manage to poke their way into everything, my little

  life on its tiny plate, with a side dish of sky and a spoon

  to go with it.

  Wonderful

  I don’t even bother knocking on my stepbrother’s door,

  I just barge in and pull him off his bed

  and say, You’re coming with me.

  All the way down to the docks,

  he won’t talk to me

  but that’s okay because I shove him in the dinghy

  and I say, Row and he does.

  We take turns rowing

  until we are in the center of the bay

  and I say that I’m sorry for leaving him like that

  but sometimes you have to do stupid things

  to swim your way back into the smart ones.

  After a second, he says, Fine. I forgive you.

  I look at his often-annoying face

  and I lean over and whisper

  into his mostly dirty ears

  the first of many stupid warnings

  and tall tales that I plan to

  spend his life telling him.

  I guess if you look at it

  I’m right where I started

  and everything is still trees and water and rain

  and small town, small town,

  but no matter how you slice it,

  it is my life

  and I am floating right out here

  in the middle of it.

  Kirsten Smith is the cowriter of the feature films Legally Blonde, 10 Things I Hate About You, Ella Enchanted, and She’s the Man. Her award-winning poetry has appeared in such literary journals as The Gettysburg Review, Witness, Massachusetts Review, and Prairie Schooner. She lives in Los Angeles, where she likes going to rock shows and hanging out with her dogs. Her Web site is www.kiwilovesyou.com.

  acknowledgments

  The author gratefully acknowledges the following publications in which several poems in this book have previously appeared: Hayden’s Ferry Review, Left Bank, The Massachusetts Review, North Dakota Quarterly, On the Bus, Rush Hour, Shenandoah, Soundings East, and Witness.

  Utmost love and gratitude to Mel and Katie Aline, best friends, beautiful parents and purveyors of the finest writer’s colony on the West Coast. Infinite thanks to Susan Phillips, the best teacher I’ve ever had. Thank you to Steven Malk, punk rock agent extraordinaire, for inspiring this endeavor; Megan Tingley for her belief in the book; and Amy Hsu for her wonderful and precise guidance. To Ryan Latimer, Gregory McCracken, Stacey Lutz, and Micah Rafferty for their collegiate encouragement, when it was most needed. To Catalaine Knell, for always reminding me I am a poet. To Seth Jaret for his enthusiasm and creativity. Love and kisses to Noel Krueger for being the girl I’ve always looked up to. Many thanks to Shannon Woodward for lending her foxiness to the cover of this book. To Brandon McWhorter for his creativity. To Elwood Reid and Doug Cooney for their inspirational work and wisdom. Thanks to The MacDowell Colony, who provided the picnic lunches that fortified many of these poems. To Shauna Cross for her witty prose. To
Alene Moroni, Michael Hacker, and Doug Wyman for their constant and true friendship. Thank you, Lusty, for being such a drama king. And thanks to the movies, Madonna, and Courtney Love, all of whom inspired me to leave town and then come back again.

  As the ferry coasts into downtown,

  all lit up and windy and magic,

  I realize kids who grow up in cities

  must never dream of

  going anywhere else

  because they’re already there.

  Penny is ready to escape the pocket of home, ready to be in love, ready to find her way in the world. Navigating the choppy waters of teenage life, she confronts the complicated truths of her not-quite-normal family, the highs and lows of high school, her lost mother and her lost best friend, and one alluring bad boy who just might be more adventure than she bargained for.

  Written in raw, captivating verse, Kirsten Smith’s powerful novel explores the heartbreak and humor of what it really means to be a girl stumbling towards adulthood without a map.

  PRAISE FOR

  the geography of girlhood

  “A quirky and poignant story filled with wonderful details.”

  —Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep

  “Smith’s poems are tender maps of beauty and pain, of longing and hard-won truths, of a young girl’s journey to womanhood.”

  —Sonya Sones, author of What My Mother Doesn’t Know

  “Totally fresh, innovative, intimate, sad, exciting, and unforgettable.… Makes you feel like you are not as alone as you thought you were.”

  —Jennifer Belle, author of High Maintenance