BULLY
Shane Allison
The last time I saw my cousin, Darrin
Was at the burial of my Aunt Lurine.
It wasn’t a sad funeral.
I didn’t cry when they lowered her into Southside Earth.
Instead of wrapping me with a hug, he shook my hand
As if I was simply a friend of the family.
He didn’t show me the same kind of love as those
My kin folks give on my father’s side.
Maybe it had something to do with my being queer.
If so, I don’t want to know.
Growing up he was never much of a cousin.
Maybe because he was older than us and was never around.
Too cool to spend time with a bunch of babies.
He was worse than any bully I ignored in school because he was family.
Teasing and picking until I had no choice but to fall into a fight
Which I always lost because Darrin was the oldest, the strongest.
He knew how tender the skin of a shy boy was.
My mother asked if I remember chasing him with a knife in my grandmother’s backyard.
All that anger I would have cut him for sure.
I don’t know why my aunt left him the most out of her money.
He never wrote her letters or sent her poems.
I imagine with all the trouble that has plagued our brood,
He will either see me at my funeral,
Or I’ll see him at his.
Shane Allison
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 several 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), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical), and I Want to Eat Chinese Food off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon & Schuster). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo, Unlikely Stories, Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine, Southeast Review, and a plethora of others. He is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.