FOUR POEMS by ANDRE F. PELTIER
Kim Fields at a Pistons Game
Marcus lived two houses down.
At 15 years old we were inseparable.
After school, we watched Rap City,
Yo MTv Raps, He-Man, The Facts of Life.
Life lessons from The Eastland School
as Mrs. Garrett would mete out advice.
We read comics: he Green Lantern and X-Men,
me Batman and Star Trek.
We rode bikes to the record store; we listened to
Public Enemy with spaghetti in our bedrooms.
One night, his parents got us tickets
to a basketball game.
At The Palace of Auburn Hills,
we cheered for Zeke, Worm, Microwave.
In front of us sat Kim Fields, in all her glory;
she laughed and watched the game.
Turning to me, she smiled.
Her dreadlocks and leather jacket so cool.
Tootie smiled at me, and, during that third
quarter, my life was perfect.
Anniversary Poem
I looked at 39 different
anniversary cards
today.
They all sucked.
One said,
“All I want to do is
snuggle.”
I love snuggling
w/ you,
but the picture was of
two dogs
cuddling on a heart
shaped rug.
One said,
“We are perfect together
because you always
get all of my
jokes.”
First off,
you’re never afraid
to call my jokes
sophomoric junk.
Secondly,
that’s not really a very
good sign of the
perfect relationship
anyway.
Thirdly, “all” is implied by
“always.”
The worst of the lot:
“Love all of your
yesterdays.
Love all of our
tomorrows.
Love all of your time w/ me.”
I guess,
“Do you realize how
fucking lucky you are,
bitch?”
must have been
sold out.
Silent November
In the halls of the hospital,
Hatchet held her
holy vigil:
hovering above the
floorboards,
nervous and alone.
Long corridors
full of wild creatures
kept watch over
every breath.
Thanksgiving dinner
in the distance
if only he could escape.
Up and down
those halls.
Up and down the stairs
w/ Suzy on an
Acorn.
She sings,
“Hey Bo Diddley”
to a Bo Diddley beat.
She wonders if there’s
anyone
left to meet.
She’s thinking about
the casserole;
He’s thinking about
the street.
The phone on the wall,
in the locked cage
rings out.
Nurses answer
and he runs…
over the roof
and under the fence,
naked and cold
into the night
of silent November
snow.
With My Balls in a Sling
I. PROLOGUE
It’s been 20 years since
my left nut swelled to
the size of a lemon.
It was November 2001, and
my son was 6 months old.
We thought it was time so
I made the appointment
and Stephanie sat in
the waiting room.
II. SATRIANI ON THE TABLE
I laid on the table
with my balls through
a hole in a blanket.
The nurses, Frankie and Annette,
where chattering
about how they were going
to a beach party at one
of the doctors’ houses that
weekend;
Annette was excited
just to have
been invited.
Frankie felt as if the invitation
signified some sort
of step up in their social standing.
In walked Dr. Killingham
hanging ten.
Boombox under one arm…
surfboard under the other.
Joe Satriani wailed
as the good doctor removed
his board shorts.
It was time
for what has lovingly been referred to
as “Ye olde snippe snippe.”
While surfing with the alien,
he was surfing with my
vas deferens.
With each movement, it felt as though
my intestines were being pulled through
the incision in my sack.
He chatted with Frankie and Annette
about the upcoming party
while bobbing his head
to the music,
catching that perfect wave
of his mind,
and paying
half-assed attention
to my bits and pieces.
It was a Thursday evening.
I wasn’t needed at work
until the following Tuesday
so the long weekend was supposed
to give me plenty of time to recover.
After dinner though,
I started having trouble breathing.
Reclined on the couch,
with my right leg raised onto the back,
and Endless Summer on the television,
I began utilizing the breathing techniques
we’d learned eight months earlier.
Stephanie finally decided
a trip to the hospital was necessary.
She called my Catholic mother
and asked her to watch the kids.
I could hear the conversation
from across the room:
“So… Andre had a vasectomy today.”
“WHAAAAAT?”
“And there’s been some sort of, um,
complication…”
“WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?
“So could you come over
and hang with the kids
while I take him to the ER?”
She left the receiver
hanging from the wall
and made the half hour drive
from her house to our apartment
in 15 minutes.
An intern, just hanging loose,
looked me over.
He felt my nuts,
and he jiggled my handle.
It turned out I had
a hematoma
attached to the left one.
My right ball was still normal
so the little walnut sat there,
cut off by
the small citrus fruit.
I limped into class the following Tuesday
to find that Barry Hall
had told my students
to ask why I was limping.
After five minutes of refusal,
they finally broke me down
but soon realized
they should have left well
enough alone.
Every young woman in the room
looked absolutely disgusted;
every young man in agony.
It took six months to clear up,
and I had
blood in my cum
for a couple months after that.
III. EPILOGUE
Two years later,
I broke my toe
and lost the nail.
The big left one
has been a little fucked up
ever since.
The nail didn’t grow back correctly
so I saw my doctor.
She told me that there were
three options.
1) Leave it alone and hope it gets better on its own.
2) Apply some sort of lotion to help the nail get over the fleshy bump at the end of my toe.
3) Yank the nail out and cauterize it so I just don’t have one there.
“It’s an easy procedure,”
she said.
“We can do it right here in the office.
Just a couple injections
to dull the pain.”
She motioned to
the sides of my toe
to show
where the needles would go.
“Dr. Killingham does this procedure
every Wednesday evening.”
“Killingham?
The guy who botched
my vasectomy?”
“Yeah, those are his specialties:
toenails and vasectomies.”
I chose option one.
It’s been almost twenty years
since my left nut was the size of a lemon.
As I said,
my toenail is still a little fucked up,
but I’m surviving.
My balls are starting to
sag with age,
but the size is okay now too
and there is almost
no pain.
Andre F. Peltier (he/him) is a Lecturer III at Eastern Michigan University where he teaches literature and writing. He lives in Ypsilanti, MI, with his wife and children. His poetry has recently appeared in various publications like CP Quarterly, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Provenance Journal, About Place, Novus Review, Wingless Dreamer, and Fahmidan Journal, and most recently he has had a poem accepted by Lavender and Lime Literary. In his free time, he obsesses over soccer and comic books. @aandrefpeltier