Miss Detox 2009. By Kevin Ridgeway

my gay rehab roommates performed 

a three hour makeover, which transformed 

me into a real woman for that night’s 

Halloween Ball in the cafeteria.  

the night staff purchased us a shitload 

of candy corn and gave us two extra

hours up beyond our 9am curfew.  

tan pantyhose chafed my genitals 

as I draped a frock over my broad 

shoulders with a high peekaboo slit, 

raised on thrift store heels and topped 

by a dumpster dive wig of tangled 

blonde curls in the sacred falsified 

magic of Aqua Net.   my life became 

every girl’s Xanax withdrawal 

hallucination come true with a wave 

of my fairy godsponsor’s wand.  

my schizophrenic crackheaded 

gangbanger fellow patients had to 

stifle their hard-on’s for me when 

my faint stubble began to peer out 

from the Maybe it's Maybelline 

Ultimate Tones Foundation, and 

they remained puckered in shock 

by my deep voice as it left a crimson 

sucker-punch kiss on the insecure 

masculinity they jacked off and 

smoked rock cocaine to cope with.  

But my fairy godsponsor kept me 

humble and changed this cucumber

back into the unsexy pickle it will

always remain in the phantom kiss 

beyond one eternal, diseased midnight.

KEVIN RIDGEWAY lives and writes in Long Beach, CA. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Spillway, Up the River, Suisun Valley Review, KYSO Flash, Home Planet News, Cultural Weekly, Big Hammer, Misfit Magazineand So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. He is the author of six chapbooks of poetry. His latest book, A Ludicrous Split, a collaboration with fellow poet Gabriel Ricard, is now available from Alien Buddha Press.