Your cologne smells like what my grandfather wore
to church on Saturday afternoons, sliding on, over his black dress socks,
his older-than-dirt penny loafers with a small
brown shoe horn, cornering in his foot with the gentleness
of an alligator easing it’s way from the cold waters of a river
to the warm muddy banks of a runoff pond.
He would leave us to go to church, then, which I was happy about
because it meant more time to myself
and the television and less time with him watching me do that.
I could be who ever I wanted, watching shows with superheroes
and scientists who bred their babies in a bottle.
He would be back in an hour and a half and complain
about traffic on I-4 before seeing me and my brothers in the living room
watching cartoons where the devil had claws
and was man in a woman’s gown, and he’d whistle and say
hey guys, let’s cut it out, meaning the TV, and he’d walk
to the remote and turn it off, throwing that too-strong-
to-take-deep-breaths cologne at us, the one that smells just like
your cologne does, Kevin, as you douse yourself at the foot
of our bunk beds and decorate the whole house
in an aroma of shut-that-gay-crap-off smell, that too-polite-
to-be-anything-more-than-stern waft. Under pretense of being the good guy,
the neighbor who takes care of his lawn, you’ve got claws
the sizes of wine bottle openers, wit like a brick
and a smell so keen it makes me want to throw up:
I don’t like you Kevin Avila. I don’t like you one bit.

Parker Logan is a student at Florida State University and is the president of FSU’s Poetry Club. His work has been featured in The Daily Drunk, and is forthcoming in The Allegheny Review and Pretty Owl Poetry.