Whatever you do, don’t tell my folks.
It would break their porcelain hearts.
Cover up my body before the cops arrive.
If this got out to the press, my name
Would be ruined. Get rid of all the evidence:
Butt plugs, whips, toys, strawberry-scented lube, glow in the dark condoms.
Take them out, burn the condoms.
This is gonna kill my folks
When they get hit with all this evidence
That all my life, I lusted after male hearts
Like t-bone steaks in the name of love.
So make sure they don’t arrive.
Last night when I arrived,
There were all these condoms
On the floors of rooms with names
Of folks
Who wore their hearts
on their sleeves like tags of evidence
To make it evident
in showing that they had arrived
Out of the battlefield of broken hearts.
Boys whose cocks sport Trojan condoms
For the thin-boned men folk
With drawn-in faces of conundrum names.
One-nightstand names
Tattooed to tanned asses for evidence
For the red-blooded folks
Who have arrived
That step on glow in the dark condoms
To discover men with hard, arctic hearts.
Beatless hearts
Branded with names
Where sheep skin condoms
Lie on the bathhouse floor of evidence.
I have arrived
Dead into the bosom of my folks.
If you find me dead in the bath house,
Save me from those who savor the meat of tender hearts.
Cover my name, burn the condoms. Get rid of the evidence before my folks
arrive.
You were as popular as a head cheerleader
Prom queen student body president.
All those friends.
You got away with murder.
Treated like a prom queen student body president
Sneaking into bedroom windows,
Getting away with murder
Long after curfew.
Crawling through your bedroom window,
Making the Honor Roll every six weeks,
Breaking the rules of curfew.
You were the daughter all the teachers wanted
Making honor roll every six weeks.
You were a Brownie before discovering boys,
A daughter all the teachers dreamed of having,
Before you found the magic in make-up.
You were a Brownie before discovering boys:
Their hormones wild as blackberries.
You found the magic in make-up.
Boys sniffed you like dogs
With their hormones wild as blackberries.
You were so smart,
Until boys started sniffing around like hounds in heat.
You were a girl with super human strength.
A girl so smart
Who was going to be a computer programmer,
A girl with super human strength.
What happened? You used to make straight A’s in school.
He
sits in the dark
like a bad secret
at the poetry reading.
Lingers through the double doors.
Hair, the color of the jellybeans I hate
shines beneath dim
vanilla lights.
Peer at him over my navy blue shoulder.
Arm settles like colonists.
Elbow taps the red Dixie
cup pervaded with beer.
Through cigarette conversation
you were a boyfriend
I have yet to meet and break up with.
You look exhausted
nodding off under
banisters & ceiling fans.
He knocks over the Dixie cup of beer
that runs and forms puddles on the glossy
hardwood floor.
The hardwood floor of my heart.
Shane Allison has been published in over sixty magazines and journals including online journals such as Gnome and The Doomed City. His first book, Black Fag, will be released by Future Tense Books.