Spring 2015
The Bully by RK Biswas
What do you think the class bully did? After
she’d pulled braids, pushed and yelled. Stamped
her broad feet, hips gripped
hard in knuckled hands. Stout. Mulish.
After she was pulled up
for fighting with fifteen
boys near the school grotto which quickly
became salacious gossip,
fight became flirt, for the girls
were lusty for revenge.
Sure she deserved it. Sure she was
laughed at. Jeered at
in genteel whispers, because the Convent’s
Dance on a Moonbeam, by Theodor Severin Kittelsen corridors demanded it. Didn’t we all
hate her?
When the nuns played
Pat Boone on vinyl records
and the girls danced, sometimes cheek
to cheek, a hand moving
insidiously, nobody would partner her.
She was a good dancer though,
and one day hit upon a great idea. She
would show them the African dance.
A senior who had supposedly lived in
that continent in a country whose name
they couldn’t pronounce had let her in
to the secret. Who knew
what was or wasn’t true? It was the era
of Phantom comics, of Denkali and the Wambesi
and Llongo tribes. Who knew?
Who cared? She danced.
The Linnet's Wings