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 four 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 Books), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori Press), Sweet Sweat ( Hysterical Books), and most recently I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire Press). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica, and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon and Schuster Publishing). 

Shane’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo, Unlikely Stories, Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine, the Southeast Review,  South Broadway Review, Postscript Magazine and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Fat Boy

I’m barely awake checking emails

And social media messages

When my mother asks me 

If I want anything from the store. 

She does this sometimes

As if she’s some kind of space Martian

From Mars who is new to planet earth

And doesn’t know her way around a supermarket.

With sleep seeds in my eyes still,

I tell her to get yogurt,

Turkey cold cuts, and chicken pot pies.

I tell her to throw waffles in the cart,

Plums and green grapes without the seeds.

I know she’ll forget most of what I ask 

For like kiwi and dragon fruit.

Raisin bread instead of Cherry plums.

I don’t want to clutter corners of her mind

With things like blackberries and almond milk.

Needed ingredients for smoothies

To lower my blood pressure.

She will come home armed 

With an arsenal of bags 

Filled with turkey wings,

Ham hocks,

Neck bones and frozen okra.

Finger cookies for dad 

And canned vegetables pickled in some soupy,

Salty concoction.

She’ll come with chocolate milk,

Sugar Pops and frosted flakes,

Zero sugar root beer for Dad’s bad blood

And her kidney disease, which was

News she broke to me in the lobby at the Cancer center

Minutes before her cat scan. 

The calories I burn at Planet Fitness

Will only be regained under her reign

Where everything must be cooked 

With butter, bacon or grease. 

She doesn’t know that it takes more than pushups

To flatten a belly like this.

A thousand thigh crunches to keep them from rubbing together.

My friend Chuck lost 90 pounds on Noom.

I would give both my nuts

To shed 90 pounds of fried food flesh,

Suck out the midnight cravings with a vacuum hose.

My mother doesn’t know what it’s like to look down

And not be able to see your dick without having

To hold your belly in. 

“You look fat sitting on the sofa,” she told me once.

“Are you still going to the gym?” She asked when she

Saw me coming out of the bathroom with my shirt off. 

Tonight I’ll write out a grocery list on the back of this poem:

Pork loin

Salmon

Beet and pomegranate juice

Almond milk,

Yogurt,

Blackberries and whiskey,

A little something extra for the smoothies.

For My Mother Who Asks, “Why is Your Stomach so Big?”

My belly is my hurt locker

Where I hold years of pain,

And the kind of anger that destroys

Towns like a Tennessee tornado and there are no survivors.

No matter how many pushups I do,

I will never burn off this bitterness.

Every stretch mark is a daisy chain of memories.

This one tells the story of the day dad beat me

Because I embarrassed him 

In front of his former high school football coach

For not dressing out in gym.

This one tells of the day he went to prison for a year

And we had to rustle up dinner by standing in line at food banks.

This one that trails down to my thigh

Tells of the look you gave me

When that mall cop told you

I was being arrested for indecent exposure.

These stretch marks mark the night

You told me you would rather be dead 

Than have a gay son. Do you remember?

I was only nineteen and not as sweet.

This one that leads down to my belly button

Is the day dad called me a sissy.

I heard him outside the bathroom window.

So in case you’re wondering what happened to me,

Why I won’t be the son you want me to be,

It’s not due to fried chicken or pork chop sandwiches,

Or late night snacks of raisin creme pies

Or nutty buddies,

But a rage unlike anything you will ever know, Mother.