Kayla Sargeson: Keeping my Dick in My Pants

I’m inside the Atwood Street Mini Mart,

staring at the selection of fudge pops in the cooler

when a guy walks up, bends down to my ear

says “I live around the corner.”

I think about bending him over right there,

but I’m distracted by the red light in me about to change,                

maybe because I keep having dreams about colors, my

life turning into a psychedelic haze, where it’s 1958

and Elvis Presley was drafted into the army and who will dance

for us now, who will gyrate his hips in front of the television

and who will be captured, lock-shot from only the waist up

while Elvis is away at war, America does not want to see his

shaved head get onto that plane, but America wonders if

he cried for his mama when the bombs and guns got too loud

(he loves his mama) because even The King needs

a little TLC during war, needs a little squeeze, but what do I know

about such things while I’m sitting on my bed, dreading going to work

when I want to stay here with my cat and call my grandma just to hear

her voice on the other end, because sometimes I just need to know the people

I love are alive and okay (whatever that means) because it’s 2010 and

I’m barely into my 22^nd year and I feel sometimes I don’t know much about

anything, just that when Elvis sings “Mama Liked the Roses”

on his Christmas album even though I don’t like Christmas, I cry a little.

From First Red published by Main Street Rag, copyright 2016 Kayla Sargeson.