Vivian Pollak

Board of Nails

Once upon a time, there was
this guy walking down the street,
arm around his babe,
when these three mean dudes
standing in a doorway started
making crass comments
as they passed by.

She was a gorgeous
Asian babe and they said:
“Hey, is her pussy slanted too?”
Then there was this board of nails
just lying there on the ground nearby
so the guy picked it up and started 
BEATING THE LIVING CRUD
out of them with it.

The three mean dudes took off,
all of them bloody and shaken.
“We tangled with the wrong guy!”
they could be heard to scream as
they ran down an alleyway,
never to be seen again.

But the moral here was that the babe,
who was thinking of breaking
up with him anyway,
probably that same week, 
changed her mind and decided
to break up with him
right there on the spot.

“Sorry you had to go through all that,”
she said through half-moon sad eyes.
He wasn’t sure he heard her right,
as he was panting really hard,
wiping splinters and dirt from
his cashmere sweater.

He got the message clear enough,
though, as she click-clacked off
in her sexy strap heels at a pace
as though she were trying
to catch a train. 
The click-clacks grew fainter
and fainter as he watched
her shrink to nothing
down the street.

With few other options,
he took the board home instead,
admiring the glistening red blood
upon its faded yellow surface
along the way.
He thought he should be proud,
but his pride was slowly
hissing through a tiny
puncture wound.

He turned the board over
and over in his hands
as he walked inside,
gingerly counting its spikes.
On his third run-through
it came to eleven.
He liked that number, so
he propped it up in the corner,
lording over dirty shoes
and umbrellas.