The asexual boy buys roses for the entire strip club

j. david

“Guilt never stays long enough to make any difference,”

the stripper’s breasts in his face as he tells me this—

crumpled dollar bills, thick with sweat, mopping his forehead.

I am sitting next to him depositing dollar bills

into another dancer's mouth. She keeps swallowing—

saliva-gauzed lips siphoning them into her throat.

When I am out she begins to eat my fingers and hand

and then my arm too as the ghosts of ex-lovers

crawl from this virgin wound—

hungry and claret-stained pedophiles making clumsy love

to a small boy trapped inside a body far too big

and burdened and broken but

there has never been any use in crying over

spilled blood.

J. David is from Cleveland, OH and edits poetry for Flypaper Magazine.