Award-winning poet Cyrus Cassells explores the difficult intersections of faith, family, and sexuality.
—
Deacon Costen’s Handclap Joy
Dozing near a welcoming blaze
of wild indigo,
I found little A.
in the woods out back,
& whipped him for the sissy-sweet
place he’d hidden . . .
But I was a wily truant,
full of escapades,
an under-the-Dipper dreamer myself,
till, at fifteen, I felt
my pedestal-propped hero’s lips
brush mine;
for a long time I believed
The Second World War made me into
a “lubricated” Low Country man,
but now I see:
the kiss was the screw-turn,
the kiss & the deep-down fear
that followed.
What else could have caused me
to shun the boy
who spurred my desire to become
a soaring ace,
the boy so aptly named
Titus Sparrow—
who taught me to revere
the spirits of winged slaves.
But I banished his beaming goodwill
& tales of thrilling magic,
his unbidden lips.
Titus said he hadn’t meant it
as a perverted thing,
scout’s honor,
that I resembled a “red-boned”
angel in the hammock.
Time & again, time & again,
he begged to see me,
but I refused, till,
under some riverbank trees,
two startled anglers found
T.’s bloated body—
Lord, dear Lord, if I let
my son float away from me,
like Titus—if I called it sin
that separated us,
then I’ve lived to see my own sin
come to knock
at my upstanding door:
tight-lipped veteran,
deacon of the church,
on-the-sly drinker—
The old paint-by-numbers faith
seems puny now
beside the durable fire
of a thrown-away friend,
or a child’s daydreamy pleasure
in a live-a-little bloom of indigo.
And the pay dirt
after decades of pain
is a handclap joy
like furious gospel,
as one man builds the sturdy bridge
back to his son,
one man soars away from
the secret glass at last.
***
Interested in submitting poetry to The Good Men Project? Check out our guidelines.
Like The Good Men Project on Facebook