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How May I Help You?
Lips are well slicked for the task.
I know I ask a lot; speaking is the easy part.
“Smile baby, baby! Say,
‘How may I help you?’”
When the tigers got all five claws
buried deep in an ass,
I beg myself to bray
in a pleasing tune.
Hiding behind red delicious
temptation, I chew my food slowly;
there’s a ‘Fuck you’ buried in my throat;
there’s a homicidal maniac eating with me.
How many ways
can a body be pulled?
They push past the pop.
Spanish inquisitors say
salvation is in the burning.
They disarticulate me
and leave me to dangle like a broken tree
or a pair of cheap glass earrings
swaying forgotten
on the ears of a little girl’s
‘Last Year’s Favorite Toy.’
They do it with a smile.
Is it any wonder
I don’t trust my own?
© Coleen T. Houlihan
First published in Spoonful: A Gathering of Stone Soup Poets
Lips are well slicked for the task.
I know I ask a lot; speaking is the easy part.
“Smile baby, baby! Say,
‘How may I help you?’”
When the tigers got all five claws
buried deep in an ass,
I beg myself to bray
in a pleasing tune.
Hiding behind red delicious
temptation, I chew my food slowly;
there’s a ‘Fuck you’ buried in my throat;
there’s a homicidal maniac eating with me.
How many ways
can a body be pulled?
They push past the pop.
Spanish inquisitors say
salvation is in the burning.
They disarticulate me
and leave me to dangle like a broken tree
or a pair of cheap glass earrings
swaying forgotten
on the ears of a little girl’s
‘Last Year’s Favorite Toy.’
They do it with a smile.
Is it any wonder
I don’t trust my own?
© Coleen T. Houlihan
First published in Spoonful: A Gathering of Stone Soup Poets