after this we turned the channel to baseball

by haleyadmeliora

[this poem appears in the July 2016 issue of The Rising Phoenix Review]

did you hear about that muslim guy who killed all those faggots?
my little cousin doesn’t know
my little cousin doesn’t know
at age 11/his voice chirping
like the whine after the BANG
and the blinking shock///I wonder if
he would call me that/if he learned
that I had died///he doesn’t know
how could he know when his father
spitting/tobacco calls the mover
a shine/when he calls his best
friend gay – a joke – his mother
laughs///when my sister, warning,
paints fingernails red/don’t start, he’s
too young to understand.