BILL HOLLANDS
No Soap Radio
Tell me anything, I’ll believe it. This one time
a man I was going to have sex with told me
that his parrot gave good head. I stared
at that parrot, its stony beak, dark nub
of a tongue, and believed him. Before we
retired to the bedroom, his friends
laughed and laughed. Or the time
another man told me that if I picked up
all the litter around his ice cream truck,
soiled wrappers and such, he’d give me
a free one. My mother stormed
out of the car, so mad that her son
was being taken advantage of like that.
And then there was the story about the kid
who swallowed his tongue. Died right there
on the junior high football field. One day
my brothers and I were playing catch
and the football’s pointed tip torpedoed
into my stomach. Knocked the wind
right out of me. I didn’t know
what was happening and I ran around
like an idiot with my fingers shoved into
my mouth. Have you ever tried to hold
your tongue? Trust me, it’s not easy.
Bill Hollands’ poetry has appeared in Rattle, DIAGRAM, The American Journal of Poetry, The Account, Wildness, and elsewhere. He was recently named a finalist for New Ohio Review’s NORward Prize, North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize, Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize in Poetry, and Smartish Pace’s Erskine J. Poetry Prize. He lives in Seattle with his husband and their son.
