Douglas Goetsch
 
RECESS
 
A ring of children seated Indian style,
    a girl deciding which head to tap
        as she orbits them in her pretty dress
 
saying Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck.
    Every boy wants to be the goose,
        to bolt up and run down this girl
 
before she makes it around
    to the spot he vacated. Once
        they saw her trip and fall, exposing
 
a lovely backside covered in lace.
    Maybe that is why their heads rise
        like charmed snakes as she passes
 
saying Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck
    annoying the girls in the circle, who frown,
        and attracting now the attention
 
of their teacher, leaning against a tree,
    bringing her gaze down from the clouds
        where she had been pondering two men--
 
the one she recently broke up with
    filling her with regret about the much
        better, more beautiful one from college.
 
Now she is twenty-nine, on perhaps
    the last warm day of September,
        the smartest, prettiest girl in the class
 
is going Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck
    is an endless left hand turn,
        and she can't figure out whether
 
the girl is powerful or helpless,
    as she blinks back tears and blows
        the whistle to end this.

--2006 Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention