It's the nightly chronic pain. The need to position it on a flower printed pillow To ease my discomfort. I'm not afraid like my father Who believes he's too old and too far gone. Who holds onto railings and door trim. He has been broken long before now. He prefers things hard, Insists on the long way. I am not cut from his cloth. I can't take bone on bone. Chock full of people gather with limps and bad hips, Braces on their knees. I'm envious of the post op scars. I'm going to wear mine like an Olympic gold medal, Show it off in exchange for disgusted expressions. "Look at that man's leg, mommie." All the swelling and dried blood beneath bandages. Garrett, my nurse practitioner tells Me when I can no longer take the pain, When the injections cease to work, I will know when it's time.
collage decollage
The Vein Whisperer
My mother is always waking me about something. This morning she's going on about my leaving my socks on the kitchen counter. They're clean, I assure her. I don't care. Come and get them off the table. She can't stand filth. I always hear her in my head Complaining, nagging my father about this and that. I wake up fatigued with a headache from a nightmare, So I pop an Amlodipine to put out the fire. Guess it's what I get for slipping back in bed after breakfast. Sometimes I think my body is a land mine. One wrong move could kill me. I wrote my will on a Whataburger napkin That's around here somewhere. I thank God as I brush my teeth for letting me see another day. My barber, Calvin had a brain aneurysm at 45, Survived by two kids still in junior high. Too young to know about the kind of death That crashes parties, That never RSVPs. I wonder sometimes how I will go. A heart attack? A stroke? An aneurysm like Calvin's? I work out to keep such things away. Drink plenty of water, Eat an apple once and a while. I'd do anything for a Michael Phelps body. Today I have a date with an echocardiogram After concerns of shortness of breath, Swelling in the extremities. Days like this I wish my body Was a fat suit I can zip myself out of. I prepare myself for the lump sums of money I will have to pay the hospital out of pocket No thanks to my shitty new health insurance. It sucks getting old. Days like this I wish I had listened to my Phys. Ed. teachers. A pretty blond girl Dressed in blue scrubs calls my name. I'm glad it's her. She seems kind Like she's not going to hurt me. The room I accompany her in is dimly lit. She instructs me to lie down on my back. I push my phone and car keys In the front pocket of my jogging pants. She tells me the gel might be a little cold going on. It's not. Her touch is gentle. I don't want to see my heart beating on a monitor. That's a sight for her sweet blue eyes. She asks me to turn on my side, To place my arm up behind my head. She's just as pretty in this direction. I'd flirt with her if men weren't on my mind so much. I begin to dash off questions about Her career like paper airplanes. Where did you go to school? How long have you been a sonographer? Is it hard work? Every question gives me an answer to a question I don't ask. She's originally from Georgia and married with two step-sons. All is well, painless enough until she tells me she wants to start an IV To see how my heart is beating. The first nurse is armed with her kits and supplies. She begins to feel my arm, Rubbing and poking around for signs of veins. She notices the scar tissue at the corner Where my right arm bends at my elbow. She thinks she's found one and tells me to take a deep breath Before she slips the needle under my skin. It doesn't take. It sucks to be unhealthy. According to her my veins keep rolling. She searches my right hand, Thumping the black side in an attempt to wake up my veins. She tries again with a new needle. Still, no luck. Twice is my limit, she says. She apologizes. I'm such a boy scout for someone being treated like a pin cushion. I hope to get a lollipop after, A sticker to put in place of a cotton swab. They talk about another nurse as if she’s some kind of vein whisperer. She comes in with a mouthful of sweet talk Armed with her own kit of supplies. She wraps my left arm with a tourniquet Before she tells me to take a deep breath. This one takes, thank God. She leaves the other nurse in a state of disbelief. The sonographer with her blue eyes and two step-sons Continues with the rest of the test I hope will tell me I don't have congestive heart failure.
happy implantable decollage
SHANE ALLISON was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish four chapbooks of poetry Black Fag, Ceiling of Mirrors, Cock and Balls, I Want to Fuck a Redneck, Remembered Men and Live Nude Guys, as well as four full-length poetry collections, I Remember (Future Tense Books), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori Press), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical Books), and most recently I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire Press). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica, and has written two novels, You're the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon and Schuster Publishing).
Shane’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo, Unlikely Stories, Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine, the Southeast Review, South Broadway Review, Postscript Magazine and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.
D.F.L. Lit 