Tuesday poem: 'The Opposite of Sex' from Nine Movies

1 The Opposite of Sex

The first time is always awkward

You held the Jaffas where I could reach
your hand too close
to my leg

Apparently Lisa Kudrow has a degree
in something
We’re always so surprised
when actors aren’t stupid

Later that night
I jumped into a taxi
and the driver looked at you
through his rear-vision mirror
and asked
‘Are you breaking that poor guy’s heart?’


This poem is the first section of a sequence called 'Nine Movies', which has just been published in Sport 39 - all six pages of it! So I'm publishing it here as a kind of celebration. You can read the rest of the sequence in the latest Sport. It's kind of a love story. Well, actually, it is a love story. *Spoiler* It ends happily - at least the poem sequence ends happily. The story hasn't ended, but it continues very happily. It may be based on a true story.

There are lots of other great things in the lastest issue of Sport too, including poems by the other members of Helen Cubed (Helen Heath and Helen Lehndorf), so Sport is now with 66% more Helen. They've also just got a new website: http://www.sportmagazine.co.nz/

Another thing I'm celebrating is that I got a new, whizzy and very cute computer/laptop/netbookish thing. It has things like a web cam, so I have finally entered the 21st century. So, I decided I would record myself reading this poem. I did, and the not-especially-high-quality results are below.



If you are having trouble viewing it here, you can watch it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud_1i1zckig

And go and check out the Tuesday Poem hub blog, with the featured poem, and all the other Tuesday Poem blogs: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/