I think of the split moment,
The instant you lose your balance,
The second of an instant, of that moment
You forget that it is not the green floor you’re standing on,
But the third step on the step of the ladder you are about to fall from.
You think in nanoseconds what you will hit.
The dangerous destinations:
The sharp corners,
The brick wall,
Hard metals of things that can puncture
Through flesh and bone.
Then I think of catching you
My arms a safety net.
Sit you down on a nearby blue stool
Where you take deep breaths,
Hold your chest
& Gather yourself like spilt postcards.
You gotta learn to be more careful
He's hung like a horse.
His penis touches my nose,
waves across my lips like
an earthworm. I take him into me.
Grab onto that great white ass,
press the pasty flesh of his stomach,
the bushels of musty pubes deeper into
the face my mother loves.
His semen is syrup dripping
on an unshaved chin.
I run into him on hot side streets
and you have no idea how I wanted to grab
his ever-loving jewels through the khakis
and milk his ever-loving penis of pleasure.
I wanted to french kiss him right there in front of friends,
in front of the married hotdog vendors whose chili dogs
secretly remind me of him.
I bite off the buttons to his shirt with my teeth,
to get past nipples, chest hair, the interruption
of flesh and straight to the very heart of the matter
to find out if it beats exclusively for me.
He cries as I hold his heart beating and dripping blood
in the palm of my hand, in front of an Amazon of sorority babes.
He moved in front of me like
a defenseless deer to headlights.
He was searching
for some sign of life in this body.
My mind was a best-selling novel
he wanted to read, but he gave up
hoping I would express my thoughts
in perfume scented letters and sugary poems.
I was dying to meet his wife,
the woman who stole his heart in the aisle
of suede vests and Bill Blass pajamas,
who waved goodbye in the parking lot
of a Utah department store.
His eyes never met with mine.
I didn't want him to know
that I was undressing him in dreams
helping him one foot at a time out of the tan
pants he hymned himself.
The hazy thoughts of southern fingers coursing
through Irish curls,
and wondering what he looks like
naked in a ceiling of mirrors.
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, is now available from Future Tense Books.