and so I sit in his room
and put a movie in the Betamax

and call Steven
and ask him if nuts are sensitive to cracks

and does it matter
and he says, ‘turn sideways and stick out your tongue; you could pass for a zipper’

and I draw on a piece of paper that’s next to the phone
and he says ‘aren’t you lucky to have a nice daddy’

and it was obviously a dismissal
and he says, ‘I’m going to have trouble squeezing my head out the door’

and I say ‘I know’
and there’s a long silence heavy with irony before he says ‘okay’

and I say ‘our blankets are besieged by boys’
and hang up.

This poem is a found work from Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Lunar Park and Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis and the Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal, written by Kate William, specifically Sweet Valley High #11, Too Good to Be True.

Cathleen Allyn Conway is a creative writing PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of Static Cling (Dancing Girl Press, 2012), All the Twists of the Tongue (Grey Book Press, 2018), and American Ingénue (Broken Sleep Books, 2021). Originally from Chicago, she lives in London with her partner and son. Find her on Twitter @CatAllynC.