3D Crack by Justin Zanzarella

Early Maturity

By KJ Hays

The girls display but one photo
in a cool, bored white, wood frame.
They stand very timidly in prim,
prom dresses still itchy from the pink
puckers of eczema under their skin
that confessed in red long after they
had been rushed to soccer practice,
cannonaded to flute hooting or violin
sawing lessons that did not prep them
for the boys not depicted in the photo.
The boys who made them feel deceived
by an upbringing that made them droids
with the one lone green barrette clipped
onto the room temperature parietal bones
that become unglued during sex with boys.

Boys they have to shoo out of apartments.
who occasionally trip over the slouch socks,
thigh highs, and porcelain deer fermenting
in the nail polish cloud on the tiled floor as
they stumble out after them, tits in a squish,
to the white collar, secretarial, or managerial
positions that leave little time for being girls;
except the time spent seated on the couch
searing their coiffure flat with the hell-fire
wand of the curling iron reflected by the bored
white frame that reminds them of times when
they hid in their closets listening to the sharp
lips of knives scold them; the glass bits mocking
them with their blunt jabs; the playful hiss of the
razorblades that left them teased like deaf folks
on the verge of making an oration to a quiet city.

Their psychiatric remedy crowds their day planners
with intercourse on chaise lounges about statuesque
sex with robotic boy bodies that can only make sparks
on their metal flesh, but cannot ever make them forget
the metal barrettes they use to carve the meager attention
that makes them envy Van Gogh on his way to sweet Rachel
as the racing-stripe blood muffled the long, eager murmurs
he heard from every lonely knife dangling on a rack in Arles.
The carnassial serrations that whispered: …yes…yes…yes…

KJ Hays lives in Orange County with his wild dog, Mr. Bear. He spends his time at a local library cutting shit he likes out of the newspaper. In coming months you will see his work in the following places: Yellow Mama, Grey Sparrow Press, House of Horror, and Oysters and Chocolate. You can contact KJ by e-mail: khays45@gmail.com. You can also check out his two blogs: Illegal Funk and KJ Freestyles.

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