White Limozeen
Watermelon bubble gum freshens
old whispers about men
staining white birches
behind the rest area: I was one
of them, moving trunk to trunk,
my back a fresh legend, stars
and exes marking redemption,
saliva dashing pleasure
found in the folds
I opened around a pole
inside Adam’s Rib, flinging
my legs across the stage: the MC
called me White Limozeen, a nod
to his love for Dolly Parton
and the swerve of my neck
and wrist, my hips at a frequency
the men felt in their bellies
when I touched their hand
or cheek, I saw them like bright ideas
in the dark, lust desperate to expand,
to find new space to burn, cool
and collect: I was a wrapper
on the floor, drying in the ashes:
I was every song on my setlist
wobbling the same beat: I was
a ride, doors open to all of them.
Ben Kline (he/him) lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. Author of the chapbooks SAGITTARIUS A* and DEAD UNCLES, Ben was the 2021 recipient of Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry and the winner of the 2020 Christopher Hewitt Award for poetry. His work appears in South Carolina Review, Autofocus Lit, bedfellows magazine, POETRY, Rejection Letters, Southeast Review, The Shore, fourteen poems and many other publications. You can read more at https://benklineonline.wordpress.com/.
