By Mickie Kennedy

I

The surgeon wants me
to remove my prostate.
The upside: my life.
The downside: no more
erections, unless I take
a TriMix penile injection,
used by porn stars
for ten-hour shoots.
I do not feel
like a porn star.
Diapers for a year
if I’m lucky,
for a life if I’m not.
Also for a life:
arid orgasms.
The upside: no more
messes. The downside:
no more messes.

II

Reddit-strangers want me
basic: every day,
I’m swallowing seven
teaspoons of baking soda
to vault my pH
above eight. Cancer
struggles to survive,
they say, in a basic
environment. I shit
a dozen times a day.
I piss on a plastic strip
and it changes color,
almost like a game.
I live on the toilet
but still, that’s a life.

III

The Happy Prostate
Facebook Group
wants me on everything—
milk thistle, black
seed oil, broccoli sprouts
I grow myself,
sea moss, boron,
tudca twice a day,
a dog dewormer
even though I’m not
a dog, mangosteen,
hibiscus tea, soursop
leaves, and never more
than twenty pits
of bitter apricot,
unless I need
to end things early
(a drop of cyanide
in every pit).

IV

The oncologist wants me
to annihilate my prostate
with targeted blasts
of radiation.
CyberKnife.
Sounds like something
Guy Fieri would hawk
on late-night TV.
This is everything
you need, he says,
trimming his frosted tips
with a glowing scalpel.

V

Randy wants me cumming every day, a frenzy
before the famine.

With the patience of an attentive nurse,
he helps me arrive,

his finger curling towards the place
my prostate takes me—
a brief obliteration.

Maybe if I touch the cancer,
he says, it’ll leave.

My stupid, silly man.
It doesn’t work like that.
But even when there’s nothing left to touch,

I would let him touch me there.

---

Mickie Kennedy (he/him) is a gay writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Threepenny Review, POETRY, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter/X @MickiePoet or his website mickiekennedy.com.