Alan Perry

Svelte

My thinness always held weight

in the mouths of others.

The skinny words spoken

by football coaches

and friends alike,

the snapping twigs

of adjectives that kept me

on the sidelines.

Even the girlfriend comments

about my clothing—better on

than off. Or those

about my monkey arms

when playing basketball,

the slams against my bones

that broke so easily

under pressure.

But I honed a skill to lean

invisibly behind a birch tree,

slip between steel posts

of schoolyard fencing.

I could slice

through a crowd

who wondered how

a glimpse of light

entered the room

and left no shadow.

Alan Perry’s debut chapbook, Clerk of the Dead, was released by Main Street Rag Publishing in 2020. His poems have appeared in Tahoma Literary Review, Third Wednesday, Ocotillo Review, Panoply, Remington Review, and elsewhere. He is a founder and Co-Managing Editor of RockPaperPoem, a Senior Poetry Editor for Typehouse Magazine, and a Best of the Net nominee. Alan holds a BA in English from the University of Minnesota and he and his wife reside in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN. Find him online at https://alanperrypoetry.com.