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PACK

We learned to sell ourselves early in life. Got badges
for good sales and how to sew. The deft among us praised
for the perfect square knot, we chanted, feverishly
fumbling, Right over left, left over right and under--

Polite, our socks yanked tight up under our knees,
we made vows to the Queen. We really meant them.
Our secret hand signals, our hierarchy,
we were like the Freemasons, only smaller.


We were made to circle a mushroom. Not sure why.
The moms, let's not forget the moms--
automatons, pre-programmed to pick up
and drop off and pick up again.


O, they'd crowd in the corner of the gym
unable to pick out their kid from a distance.
All that competition! Here, here! Over here!
you'd scream--as if screaming would set you apart.


Later, we would be waitresses, work in factories.
Sell beautiful things we ourselves could not afford.
Later, we'd bury our mothers--every one of us.
Plant mushrooms in the dirt. Circle them.


OF A TIME

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still.


-- William Blake, "Nurse's Song," Songs of Innocence

Here is the place where I grew up:
a ridge of high cold mountain surrounds
a flat town set deep
into a valley. Thirty thousand
people live here, three of them
my own. I am lucky; we keep horses:
two big bays with quick eyes
and soft coats that gleam when I brush them.
I have friends. I bridle my animal
and ride out to meet them. Together, we ride
over pastures into the pale forest light.
Our galloping: our bodies' thrilled moment,
staunch cedars whipped into a green haze,
our paths chopped to bits by hooves.
Now, into the ravine, we lean back
in our saddles, feel our muscles
heat with strain as our horses' haunches dig in
to the bank. We go down, feet thrust
firm in our stirrups as we hit the muddy
water and then--we are light!
Is it possible that such a beast can swim?
He weighs a ton (at least!) but here
he is, his expectant ears pricked forward,
forward, as he glides through the murk.
The trees have made a room for us,
surround our sounds, the sounds of girls
swimming with horses.
How far we are from the town. How
we animate ourselves.


FOR THE TEEN MOMS AT THE VALLEY FAIR MALL

1: Jenni
The first time Jenni had sex, she was thirteen and the
condom broke inside her and she thought: I have AIDS,
even though the boy on whom the prophylactic snapped
had never known a girl in that sense before, and when he saw
the sad, deflated thing at the end of his prick he still gave
a push at her slit, no idea he'd unwrapped
the candy, so to speak. And so she lived that way for days,
thinking: I have AIDS, when really she was pregnant, a days-
old zygote swimming among her veins--the fast
dread of her sickness so palpable that when she gave
birth, at last, she tried to push it back.


2: Sez Jenni
Truth is, when his hands were on me, I was fire.
Straight through to my gut, I felt my heart beat
in my body like heavy metal, that oh
baby kind of get-your-hard-on-over-here
loving I'd only heard of at lunch in the smoke pit
at school--tough girls running off their mouths
so hard you're sure they must be lying: cock this
and fuck that: it's all so unbelievable, isn't it--
the things girls say? But, let me tell you, when his smooth
talk comes, their chatter fades away. There is only:
his pink mouth.


3: Bungee
Some girls know they want it early on:
the husband, the kids, the whole freak circus sideshow
of diaper bags and diapers, dentist's and doctor's appointments.
So when Sarah, at fifteen, and for the fourth time, took a good long
pee on a white plastic stick, and it turned its peacock hue,
bright blue in her mother's bathroom under the cool fluorescents,
she felt her heart go quick, a feeling of falling
matched only by the time she'd gone toes-
up off the edge of a bridge in North Vancouver. That same tense
feeling as before she'd jumped, in the waiting
for her blue consequence.


4: And furthermore
when you have a kid too soon, they send you to
a special "class" at school where you learn
some things the other girls don't learn, sometimes, ever:
how to change a diaper, how to test a bottle (too cool
is bad for the baby's stomach and too hot may burn
his mouth) or what to do when your daughter's fever
reaches 102, which is helpful, but not helpful when you're trying
to picture exactly how to study math with a newborn
boy--or how you'll tell your boyfriend he's a father,
or what you'll do when that boyfriend freezes over,
and his loving is over.


HOW TO BAG YOUR SMALL-TOWN GIRL

Those small-town girls they like to marry early
you know. Can't wait to settle down, have
a kid or two. What they wouldn't give
for a solid man, one who's ready
to rein it in--that rampant prick--and stick
close to home, a good father, provider
and lover, a tall drink of water
who's cool when the pickup's bust, stick
shift stuck in second gear or the condom's broke
again. But there's no such thing as too much man
to handle. Those girls, they like them rough
around the edges, tough boys who'll never balk
at next month's rent with heart enough to love
a woman right, again and again and again.


HOME OF SUDDEN SERVICE

The last year of high school, I got a job
as a pizza delivery person, drove burning hot
stacks of Hawaiian-with-extra-cheese around
all night in my Volkswagen Rabbit. The radio
always playing something like "Smoke
on the Water" or "Crazy on You," and I smoked
so many cigarettes my pointer finger started
turning really yellow. After a while, they let me work
in the kitchen too. Squirting bottles of sweet
tomato sauce onto discs of dough.
I quit that place for the coffee shop with
the medical/dental and got an apartment
with Angel right away, which was about time.
The first month, we made love
in every room. I worked my ass
off in the coffee shop and got myself promoted
to shift supervisor after only four months;
Angel got on full-time at the shop.
So I got my Dogwood and I got pregnant.
Didn't seem to be any reason not to, especially
with the mat leave, and we weren't wrong.
Cole's three-and-a-half now. I have to leave him
with Mom on the days I go to work.
I try to get a lot of early shifts so I can spend
nights with Angel and Cole, but it's hard.
There aren't that many supervisors at the shop,
so I have to work a lot of nights anyway.
It's a lot of responsibility. On my days off
I take Cole to visit his dad at work.
Cole loves a truck up on a jack.
Whenever we show up, we wait for Angel
in the office. There's a sign out front that reads
Home of Sudden Service, but sometimes
it takes him a while to notice us.
When he looks out from under the truck
and sees us, though, he gives
us this shy kind of smile, as if we're his secret
and heat passes through my body like a wave.
Sometimes I think he's still getting used
to the idea of us. When he comes home, he's filthy,
but I love the smell of him, he smells like my father
used to when he came home from work.
I don't know--is that fucked up? I don't think so.

Excerpted from Home of Sudden Service by Elizabeth Bachinsky. Copyright © 2006 by Elizabeth Bachinsky. Excerpted by permission of Nightwood Editions. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.