By Brian Brown
In all the sacred, blood-stained South
you were the bleedingest heart of all,
a reluctant Baptist swimming upstream
against the judgement of your ancestors.
You suffered years in that womb,
lapping up the fiery sweat of preachers
intent on sending your shameless queer soul
straight to hell. And then me.
How disgusted the neighbors looked
when I explained the Stonewall Inn,
a history they cared nothing about
with their safe bedrooms and broken libidos.
Still we fought the brave battle
You ground keys & sold rifles
on Wal-Mart’s concrete floors,
made slaw dogs at Johnnie’s Drive-In.
I painted silos & propane tanks
with the chemical scars to prove it,
checked in boring husbands
at the Holiday Inn.
We gave each other hope,
suffered hungover disciples
in their outdated designer clothes,
neat new sanctuaries.
We knew what they said,
making sermons of our lives
while we broke and entered
their deepest, hidden closets.
Brian Brown, of Fitzgerald, Ga., is a 2008 recipient of the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Santa Clara Review, Ganymede, Breadcrumb Scabs, The Moose & Pussy Chiron Review, Velvet Mafia, Roanoke Review, SWELL and Gay City, among others.