The Tip (Round 3)
Let's workshop this poem where two men--perhaps Crip affiliates--debate what constitutes going too far during a session with an infant prize paid for with fentanyl to a junky mom
The Tip In heady dispute overtop Bobby Brown’s “Roni”— a back and forth whose public-forum normalcy belies not only the candlelit mood of the slow jamz, but also the grave implications (as if the question were simply whether it would be easier to defeat a horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses)— around a sordid coffee table two men stand: flaccid from verbal adrenaline, jeans slumped to the carpet of cigar guts, burger wrappers, and a lime teether (its vibrancy beaten by the detritus of indifference). The younger man—who supplied that fentanyl key to the heart of the pockmarked mother, now sedate in its numb pulse against the under-toilet linoleum— remains firm in the siren-laden section eight of trash turned trashier by the guileless gurgles of innocence, the coos: “Big Cuz. You talkin bout killin this bitch!” “How you figure? Little bitch suckin like she hungry. Got that mah-fuckin instinct. Look: like mom dukes and shit.” The younger man shakes his head, but still stroking himself. “I’m talkin size. Shit too tight, Cuz!” Engrossed in debate, each cradles a “tenderoni” foot (coarsened thumbs gentle against the pliant arches) like any normal adult wiping clean the soiled creases during a diaper change. The nonpenetration rule (reaffirmed by the mom before her bathroom dash) the free-riding elder regarded as mere suggestion: “Trust, Young Cuz.” Below conscious awareness, a health-class factoid from recent juvie—how girls are born with all their eggs—syringes conviction into his stance, one still facing furrowed brows. “On God, Cuz. Shit born ready to stretch crazy.” “Nah, I’m good on that.” “Ain’t even hearin me! Lil nigga, how you think they gon have babies?!” “Nigga, she ain’t ready to have no fuckin’ baby!” “Shit be born stretchable, Cuz. Just can’t hit deep.” After a teabag into the suckling reflex to restore that baby-arm rigidity, he snatches the other foot (“Tsk”)—rotating its butt to the edge for missionary. “Just the tip. See? Steady cooin for that chocolate! Slut like mom dukes. Bet she take two pipes, nigga!"