October 2021
Bio Note: My most recent book, Animals in English, poems after Temple Grandin, was published by Dos Madres Press in 2020. I am a co-founder of the CUNY Start program at The City University of New York, where I work as a professional developer.
Superbuff
Feel free to send me a heart
with slut!, a wish with teeth,
the rancor of an older gent
who loves the Lord more than
a steady diet of porn. Send lost
passwords, last wills, proxies,
prophesies, wild, inappropriate
execs in floral tees who vape,
cowboys who gaze at the horizon,
mind the bottom line.
As I was trying to end our fling,
you cut me off—you needed to
explain why you owned licensed
guns and killed a man one hurricane-
lashed night inside your GMC
franchise, where you found out
what happens when a massive
thief refuses to obey your freeze.
What kind of person waits
there in the dark, armed
in a storm? I didn’t ask, moving
apace into ghost mode. The dead
man was handsome, violet-eyed,
blond, fresh from the prison gym
& superbuff, you said, a formerly
fat kid the whole town knew
out on parole, which is who
theft insurance is for.
©2021 Hilary Sideris
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