I can remember the morning you bum-rushed my butt, a savage in a hurry to pitch me forward and into the curly tapirs, but I went with the program and let them nose me around the grounds and snap my arms in place underneath the heavy squash. Oh what with the harvest so fucking close and the brutality of falling temperatures, I wanted more than anything to guess the denim scarecrow was going to flex its arms and legs and have the bulging wherewithal to rally to my aid, but that kind of shortsighted thinking took zero account of the many ravens out there still pretending to be martins; of you locked in the rut of playing toro; of the chubby, taciturn shrews gone hopelessly depressed and molasses-slow for weeks and weeks to come.
I’M PALE, I TELL YOU, I’M PALE
Many a creature dies a pale death between the end of kelly-green summer and the chill beginning of rust-and-red fall-- I know that describes me to a “t.”
Oh we’re not talking Death the Finality here, I still pop back up when the sun’s gone down, ‘romp city alleys in meager street light, ‘still screw a pro or two in earshot of rats
scurrying on the cobblestones—picturesque depravity of that sort—but nothing so arrow-to- the-heart as when you campaign for younger men and smear their mouths in broad daylight
across your areolas, painting lips brown or black in the bargain. True, you can argue if I’m that shaky an observer as to be unsure of brown and black,
why, I must be one helluva lot nearer to winter than “at the chill beginning of rust-and-red fall.” The big point is you’re nowhere close to winter, and I admit, of course, I’m knee-deep in the shit.
Kelly-green at best describes my liver (while it beacons the way to your panties and bra); rust-and-red drips from me every damned day (while it’s the stick lads stuff you with per hour).
O my love for you still seems a slow-drying paint, but it’s ‘cause I’m pale, I tell you, I’m pale, and I darken no more on the closest of nights, regardless of breath you bring in from the day.
ROVER IN MANHATTAN
Devil-in-the-essence-of-a-dog (with brimstone and sulfur seeds wedged inside your paws), you stay clear of picking up that shit if you follow simple rabbit scents or run black squirrels up hickory trees, instead of burying your warm, wet muzzle in the folds and promise of my scrotum. Yet it’s good to see you sense your limits, that you’re not tempted to sniff about the granite foundations of skyscrapers rising from Central Park’s open borders, and, Rover, it’s a thing of wonder you’ll not now chase the leads you get from crisscrossing my corduroy crotch, ‘won’t follow their arousing trail to some of New York’s best bordellos.
Bio: William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine little mags as Amarillo Bay, PRISM International, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, Salted Feathers and The California Quarterly.