The Tip (Round 7)
Let's workshop this poem where two men debate what constitutes going too far during a session with a junky mother's offering to the god of fentanyl
Scent of the Day: Opus XI, by Amouage
Review forthcoming
The Tip Two men stand blunted over a thrice-curbside coffee table— gang glyphs gouged into its sticky body like cellblock graffiti; a takeout carton, Tasty Hunan, wedged under the short leg. Jeans and boxers puddled over baby-blue Nikes on carpet crunchy with cigar guts, busted vapes, and that lime teether (its vibrancy stomped by the ashy deadfall of indifference)— animalic notes of street-ball perinea plume over stale Glade. Their dispute, its casual air (as if merely “Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or . . . ?”), contradicts more than just the candlelit mood of Bobby Brown’s “Roni” on the boombox. The younger man—the one who supplied that fentanyl key, that medical-grade lozenge, to the pockmarked mother’s heart, sedate in its broken pulse against the under-toilet linoleum— remains like a rock in the siren-choked section eight of trash turned trashier by the guileless gurgles of innocence, the coos: “Nah, Big Cuz. My nigga—you talkin bout killin this bitch!” “Tch. How you figure, nigga? Little bitch suckin like she hungry. Mmh, got that mah-fuckin instinct—just like mom dukes and shit.” The younger man, despite shaking his head, strokes himself— swinging in the on-deck circle. “I’m talkin size. Shit too tight!” In the manner of a parent baby-wiping the creases of thigh chub before dusting the future with talcum, each wifebeater man cups a “tenderoni” foot—coarse thumbs, matchstick strikers, soft against the pliant arches. The no-penetration rule (reaffirmed earlier by maternal jaws, chomping in hustle to the bathroom) the tagalong interloper, bandana blue, takes as mere suggestion: “Trust, Young Cuz.” Rising unnoticed from memory’s cellar an irrelevant factoid planted somehow in juvie health class— how girls are born with all their eggs—syringes conviction into his fresh-out-of-jail stance, one still facing knotted brows. “On God, Cuz. Shit born ready to stretch. Shit be crazy.” “Nigga, I let—. Nah, I’m good on that.” “Ain’t even hearin me! Tch. Lil nigga, how you think they gon have babies?!” “Nigga, she ain’t ready to have no baby!” “Shit born ready! Midget bitches got—. Shit’ll stretch, Cuz. Just can’t hit deep.” After a teabag into the suckling reflex, milk violence engorging the baby arm, he snatches the other foot with a glare: “Tch”— swiveling its rashy butt, squeaking, to the missionary edge. “Just the tip.—See? Steady cooin, cooin for that chocolate! Little hoe like mom dukes! Bet she take two pipes, nigga!"