The Curious Case of Benjamin Booty

Swinging on a bench with my wife about to pop
while my eldest takes another turn
down the tallest swirly slide
in Friedman Park,
I ask if this lady
who seems to socialize
with everyone within radius
wipes her butt with Benjamins.

I’m curious
because she looks
like she’d have money.

The houses across the way
are rather large in size,
& she appears to be
rather refreshed.

Nine months past caring,
Amber says she overheard
the woman is a teacher.

She’s got a black lab
& two to three kids in tow.

It’s hard to tell
which is which
when everyone’s up
her butt
or vice versa.

Well, Warrick teachers
just got a raise
of six-percent;
she really is
living that life!

One of her offspring,
a bit off from my
initial impression,
follows my daughter
back to where we sit.

Awkward little fellow
asks if Audrey wants to play.

She nods no to no surprise
as she’s shy around strangers,
& I don’t blame her
for making the call
on this one.

Stubborn boy persists,
growing angrier as he
asks once again
for another rejection.

After she vocalizes
her opposition,
we explain
a reason
as though
we owe it to him.

He curls his fist
as I prepare
to make his night
worse if he acts
& kicks the ground,
huffing that my girl
is mean & unfair.

Benjamin Booty comes
to collect as I imagine
she often does
her ill-mannered child
who doesn’t get the hint
that everyone doesn’t
have to play along
in games created
by a woman
starving for attention.

That’s what the dog’s about, right?

May the one in the womb know
just as my solo playing girl does
that you don’t have to give in
just because a man refuses to hear no.

©2022 Tim Heerdink All rights reserved.

Tim Heerdink is the author of Final Flight as the Fog Becomes Night, Somniloquy & Trauma in the Knottseau Well, The Human Remains, Red Flag and Other Poems, Razed Monuments, Checking Tickets on Oumaumua, Sailing the Edge of Time, I Hear a Siren’s Call, Ghost Map, A Cacophony of Birds in the House of Dread, Tabletop Anxieties & Sweet Decay (with Tony Brewer), Welcome Home, Andromeda, and short stories “The Tithing of Man” and “HEA-VEN2”. His poems appear in various journals and anthologies. He is the President of Midwest Writers Guild of Evansville, Indiana.