Tonight's Poet Corner: Sissy

Sissy
by Belinda Roddie


Hey, dreary, weary,
top-heavy, bottom-swollen sissy boy,
let's play pogo stick with your ego
and wait to see your manhood quake
between your twig thighs like a
loose splinter. Let's

take off your shirt and expose the
fleshy rivulets up and down your
caved in waistline. Trace the
cracks and fissures like we're reading a
dead palm. Curve our fingers against the
knobbly Adam's apple until we can
stroke the boyish stubble while we giggle,
giggle, pretending we want to kiss you
when all we want to do is prod you like
sad, soggy, chemical-soaked clay.

Don't cry. Crying's for sissies.
Didn't your daddy tell you that
over exoskeletons caught in amber
melting into a V-neck, unsnapping the
eel from the salty hip and
cutting an X below your jaw?
Because when you cry, we lick the hot
lava from your charred face, watching you
tumble, tumble, tumble against our hands and
wrap your arms around yourself three times
to block the laughing chill.