If You Find Me Dead in a Bathhouse
by Shane Allison


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.






Copyright © 2024 by Red River Review. First Rights Reserved. All other rights revert to the authors.
No work may be reproduced or republished without the express written consent of the author.