Mister installed a stripper pole in his
rumpus room. He doesn’t know why. Maybe
it has something to do with the caress
of spotlights on a nude, sweat-and-glitter-
spangled body (O, say can you see…?)
and the euphoria he felt once upon a time
when he twirled and twirled among the fireflies
on humid summer nights beneath Aquilla
and Cygnus, the lightning bugs flickering and
the bull frogs complaining their lungs out
and the man, his father, crashing through the night,
across the lawn, swinging his belt, screaming
words Mister didn’t know yet and his
grade school dictionary didn’t define.
There were no tracks to be
from the wrong side of. No truck stops, no
libraries. Scads of nothing important
or otherwise.
Houses lay strewn along the sides of
a blacktop wrinkled with weeds and bordering
lawns where the peony bushes wilted under
the dog day
sun. Elm trees too young yet to give
more than a belch of shade. Leaning telephone
poles. Bouquets of soybeans. Parades of cornstalks.
: Nothing.
No, really:
Nothing.
Cars swooshed past on the interstate, their passengers
full of dreams, headed someplace exciting,
someplace elsewhere as insects buzzed in waves
across brittle grass.
The taste of the dry breeze skimmed
the world with dust. Studebakers and Fords up
on blocks. Mailboxes’ blanched red flags sighing:
The electric is due, the water due, the mortgage past….
Forget what you’ve heard.
She wasn’t my first
choice when my foot touched the floor.
A man
who swayed among the notes plucked from my strings—
a man I’d lead as I charged up the slope into
darkness, not light, but to kindle light—
was.
Above,
below:
night.
My flesh afire for him. Mine for her doused like blood
flung on a holy stone. My lack, my lust—never her fault.
Never hers, my flesh brim-
full of guilt.
I looked back, the flames
dancing—
he, I—
but the world!
How to raise my voice in song
against it? What notes to pluck to light the dark?
I lost him and her both. My fault. Not theirs.
Poet, biographer, historian, and novelist, Jim Elledge has been awarded two Lambda Literary Awards, one for his book-length poem A History of My Tattoo and the other for Who’s Yer Daddy? Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners, which he co-edited with David Groff. His most recent collection is Bonfire of the Sodomites, poems about the arson of the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in the French Quarter. His nonfiction includes the biography Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy; The Boys of Fairy Town, a history of gay men in Chicago’s first century; and An Angel in Sodom, the biography of gay rights activist Henry Gerber. Almost Famous is his debut novel.
Various images of Aquariums circa 1850s and 60s, by Philip Henry Gosse, from Public Domain Image Archive and Smithsonian Archives
