Shane Allison

Ask God

Ask God to turn up the ringer on your phone.

Ask God to read the letter and to tell you what it all means.

Ask God to take the trash to the dump.

Ask God if He has a postage stamp.

Ask God to zip up the back of your dress.

Ask God to fix the damn toilet seat 

Ask God what the yellow stuff is in the bathtub.

Ask Him to show you where the flashlight is on your phone.

Ask God to supply you with a candle when the lights go out, so you don't fall. 

Ask God if he likes corned beef hash. If He's anything like me, he'll say it smells like dog food too.

Ask Him to take you out to Sam's Buffet for your stupid corn on the cob.

Ask Him to take you to the emergency room for whatever ache you got, and if He'll wait five hours in the waiting room with your purse in His lap while watching game shows.

Ask God kindly not to leave breadcrumbs on the kitchen counter and to always use a drink coaster.

Ask God to stop using so much toilet paper.

Ask Him to call the social security office to find out why 200 bucks was subtracted from Dad's monthly check.

Ask Him to make the VA give you more benefit money.

Ask Him to hold your hand because you get a little dizzy sometimes, so you wont fall face first in the azaleas.

Ask Him to help you find your phone, to find your glasses, to find your marriage license.

Ask God to give you money to pay off the cars and credit cards.

Even though dad said if anything happens to me, let the truck go.

Ask Him to give you strength instead of weakness for once.

Ask Him to give you common sense.

Ask God to find the charger on your phone.

Ask God to fetch the case of bottled water out of your car.

Ask God to unscrew the top off the washing powder.

Ask God why your son hates you so much,

And then ask Him to pray with you.

Anything but a Mother

I like to say that my mother should have been anything but…a mother.

She should have been a house cat rescued out of rain,

or a fern hanging from the end of someone’s porch.

She should have been one of those whirl-tailed lizards

That runs around in the wash room, or a queen of a wasp nest.

Anything but my mother. She should have been a phantom jellyfish,

A flying squirrel, an ox pecker or a woodpecker for all I care as long

As she wasn’t chosen to be my mother. My mother should have been

A Darwin’s Bark, a banana spider weaving strands of silk to catch juicy flies.

She should have been a perigone falcon flying high over some mountain

Someplace, or a bobcat on a mountain. Anything at all, but my mother.

What about an albatross or an olive baboon?

She has the makings of a rock python,

Or a western pine beetle, but why my mother?

Why not an emperor penguin or a box crab?

Why not a queen of fire ants, or a mot-mot?

She should have been a weaver spider, a puffin or a puffer fish.

Wouldn’t have made an ounce of difference to me as long as

She wasn’t my mother. She should have been a gazelle or some species of antelope.

An otter or a blue-eyed reindeer in winter.

She should have been a brown pelican, a cactus eating camel, or a burrowing owl.

My mother should have been a capybara mother instead of my mother.

A bearded vulture mother, or a rooster instead of my mother.

Why not a Galapagos turtle, a Flemish rabbit, or a golden snub-nosed monkey?

She should have been an Ethiopian wolf, a musk ox, an orca,

Or a dolphin being eaten by an orca.

She should have been a snow owl or a snow leopard, a tiger or a tiger lily or one of these

Dragon flies with a taste for termites. Anything…anything but my mama.

She should have been a lion or a sea lion, or maybe a banana leaf,

Or a banana fiddler crab.

She should have been some deep-sea fish with a see-through head.

A guppy, a barracuda or an Asian hornet somewhere murdering honey bees.

She should have been an orchid mantis mother, or a wombat mother,

or a warthog mother in the mouth of a mother lioness.

She should have been a cake fish, or a spider tail viper.

A honey bear mother, a polar bear mother, or an Alaskan moose mother.

Anything but my mother.

My mother should have been a chipmunk mother or a hummingbird of a mother

Drinking nectar out of the throats of snapdragons.

She should have been a puma or a horned sheep. An angular fish or dragon fish.

A vampire squid, or a sea walnut. She should have been a harpy eagle,

Or a long-nosed horned frog. A flying fox for god-sake or a stoat.

She should have been a pigeon eating popcorn in a park, or a dark-eyed junco.

She should have been an osprey, bamboo coral or brittle star.

My mother should have been a pygmy goat, a white-handed gibbon,

Or an Andean condor. What about a pink flamingo?

What about a pink flamingo or a white peacock, or panda.

My mother should have been a black rhino, hippo or wild boar

Instead of a rattlesnake of a mother. A white shark that ain’t so great.

Anything. Any-damn-thing but my mother.

My Father’s Knees

“That knee is getting worse,” I say to my father

As he struggles and strains

to walk across the living room to the kitchen for dinner. 

“My what?” 

“Your knee. You're supposed to be walking with a cane.

Pretty soon you'll be in a wheelchair,” I tell him.

“Yeah it's probably bone on bone now.” 

When I tell him that there are men older than him

That get the surgery, he says, “I ain't gettin' no surgery.”

You can't tell him nothing.

Wears his stubbornness like one his Vietnam caps.

I can't imagine him rolling around in a wheelchair.

How's he going to get it over stumps and steps?

He's not fast enough to roll to the bathroom if he needs to potty.

And who's going to help him in and out of his truck

At the Waffle House every morning?

It won’t be me. 

My own knees are bad

From years of being on them in college.

On Finding Two Chucky Dolls at the Local Dump

My first thought was that a dad had bought them for his kid,

But they were too scary, so he was forced by his wife

To get rid of them. Both looked like they had come

Fresh right out of their boxes.

They didn’t smell, or have smudges of dirt.

There were two different types of Chuckys.

One normal while the other’s face was riddled

With scars. 

There was a Tiffany doll, but her head and legs

Had been torn off. Always the girl dolls losing their limbs.

I rescued both Chuckys, and sat them upright

On the passenger side of my dad’s truck.

You’re safe now, little guys, I thought.

I placed them both on the dresser with the hopes

That they would scare my mother into a heart attack.

I kept thinking of Tiffany and how I could have put 

her legs back on with epoxy glue, but when I went back for her,

she was gone. Saved by a fan I hope.

I gave Scar-faced Chucky to my buddy, Ian thinking

How he would make an excellent addition to his Pin-Head and Tar-Man.

A day later, I regretted the decision.

They were found together, they should have stayed together.

I laugh thinking that maybe, just maybe if I wish it hard enough,

Chucky will become real and strangle my mother to death

With the cord of a phone charger.

My Dad’s Junk

So, the other night it happens again.

I walk in on my father half-naked in the kitchen.

He's just standing there in some old tattered blue tank top eating a bag of Cheetos

without a thread of underwear on.

Dick and balls out for all to see. 

I'm still trying to forget the last incident,

But once you have seen your dad's junk, 

It’s something you can't unsee.

Some might think my father doesn't know any better,

That he's losing it in his old age,

But he's got plenty of sense. 

I grab an orange when I really want a sandwich.

I’m trying to spend as little time as possible in the kitchen.

And to add insult to injury,

He looks at me like it's nothing,

Like it’s something he's proud of.

I walk back to my room with my tangerine

Realizing that this is just another scar to add among many.

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 five collections of poetry with Turbulent being his most recent from (Hysterical Books), and his book length poem, Remembered Men (Ranger Press). Shane’s collage work has graced the pages of Noisy Rain, Shampoo, Unlikely Stories, Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine, the Southeast Review, Postscript and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel, new poetry and is always at work making a collages and painting.