It was eighth grade during
Sister Conrad’s English class
when we’d read an article or two
out loud from the latest issue
of Reader’s Digest.
Every month she picked up
a big box filled with copies
from the classroom floor,
laid it down on her desk
and opened it up proudly.
We’d pass a pile of them
down each row of desks,
every one of us a cog
in the well-oiled machine
of the classroom—
me holding my hands out,
grabbing a pile from
the girl in front of me,
picking one out for myself,
then passing the rest behind me
before marveling at the flat surface
of a magazine shaped
like a small gift box.
And I remember that month
when the article we
read out loud was
“I Am Joe’s Man Gland”
and we learned how Joe’s
left testicle manufactured
sperm and a magical substance
called testosterone that
made Joe a man of action,
and I knew that some of the kids
were trying not to laugh
while reading out loud
about some old man’s balls,
but me, I was just scared
because I thought that Joe sounded
like the Dad of the kid
who sat next to me,
a kid who was big-eyed
slow and serious,
the kind of person to whom
I never had much to say
and who during a discussion
of the soldiers who were
then on trial for taking part
in the My Lai massacre
said that killing was simply
what a soldier like his Dad
was supposed to do because
if your orders were to kill
then by God you’d better
go ahead and kill.
And there never was an article
about Jane’s woman gland
though maybe we just never
got around to reading one,
or never made the time,
or maybe we graduated
by the time Reader’s Digest
got around to it
but maybe that’s how
patriarchy works,
so fast and efficient
when it comes to killing,
so in love with the magic
of finding beautiful new worlds
to destroy.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua