The Op-Ed Slam

Evening snacks. by Tim Shea

I’m here
In the confines of the inscribed masculine
Area code, inked above a nightly abdominal
Struggle
When a night compounds the world
Into the worst curious game:
Who will shake an uninhibited belly?
Who will die for their city?
How far can your legs stretch before memories mesh like
Sandpaper crispies?
I take walks and play late night dress up between headaches,
Where I ware a sock, and god sports silk.
“hunger and worry are edible! They are impatient like sisters!”
such is an answer that insulates this atmosphere,
where a posed question is a moment of dead air.
My feet slow as the bedrock walkway changes,
Now a garden of imaginative methods
For a woman to blossom:
There are hearts planted
Nowhere near each other,
That I pet in passing with my two longest fingers.
There is wide foreskin
grafted like a plane of sod,
that No one intended for me to walk around.
There are flowers who have evolved with self-pity,
Who crumble upon the contaminant of breath.
In the middle is a stout tree
Who’s cherries show the care of a lifetime.
She will die soon.
How ignorant she must be to expose such a legacy.
I tell her that I have freed her.
to droop Or be uplifted.
As red juice spreads
to the corners of my smile

Next page: Slam by Colleen Kruse