042219c

Water Bear Boy

1.
 Looms like an alien war machine,
slow as a sloth,
bullets won't stop him.
Betty was his mom's BFF;
she won't let her daughter Hillary
(named for the president) go out with him,
but the way Hillary trailed her bare
hand along his armored flank
gave him a subsonic shock:
instant diarrhea for everyone within 30 feet,
except Hillary, perhaps because she was so close,
his face a burning brick, she laughs
“Did you see that bitch Lorna? OMG!“

2.
 Hillary plans to major in biology
“I don't think I'll get to go to college“ he whispers
“What, why? You tell those bastards--“
but a siren cuts across her outrage.
Love, he tells himself,
lumbering towards the First Mid-Am Bank
where a Cadillac idles by the curb;
masked men come running out,
sacks and handguns clutched,
the latter aimed back inside,
“Water Bear Boy!“ one shouts,
and they all go Bang! Bang! Bang!
He puts his forefeet on the trunk
as they all dive through the open doors,
claws sink thru asphalt and grip,
rubber squeals like a stuck pig, burns.
Soon enough, Sheriff Dan
takes the corner on two smokin' wheels;
“I've got it from here,“ he says. 

3.
 WBB has a tutor, he
doesn't ft thru the doors at R. W. Johnson H.S,
freaks are not welcome anyway,
so says almost everyone.
His tutor, Mrs Crabb, never smiles,
left her smile in her other suit, Dad says,
but “she's the only one who would help you.“
Hillary would, WBB thinks,
but her mom's a you-know-what
and won't allow it. 

4. 
They meet on White's farm, abandoned long ago,
house burned, barn sagging, rusty red tractor
out standing in its feld, weeds up to here.
Water bears, formally tardigrades,
are arthropods, Hillary says,
they can survive in pure alcohol, even liquid nitrogen
(“Holy freakin' cow,“ he says, though he googled this years ago).
Turns out Hillary has a thing for arthropods,
has an ant farm, pins Lepidoptera,
studied horseshoe crabs for a
6th-grade science project (“2nd at State“),
so WBB's exoskeleton (hard, shiny,
covered with sensory hairs) doesn't freak her out;
his cock, a standard human appendage,
will do just fne, too, it seems. 

5.
 “Wonder if you're fertile,“ Hillary muses,
lying back in the grass, hands behind her head.
Now she's freaking him out:
he's never even touched a baby,
never had a job and, and ... “shh,“ she says,
“You're a hero."


From Metastable Systems, Ebook $2.99
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/760901