Father Homophobe

He told sensuous choir boys at camp
that he knew why they had warts on their palms,
smirking at their averted glances.
He dreamed always of immaculate conceptions
even while he rubbed raw against the zipper
of his sleeping bag.
“Christ never touched the twelve
till Judas gave him deep throat!”

The Holy Family nuclearized, unsplittably,
just behind his uneven bushy eyebrows.

When he died of prostate cancer,
a former acolyte
     whom he’d kicked out of scouts
     for fellatio
undertook his body carefully,
sealed his raw bum with a tiny gold cross
which had been blessed at Canterbury.

 

Queer poet Louie Clay (né Louie Crew), an Alabama native and an emeritus professor at Rutgers, lives in East Orange, NJ, with Ernest ‘Cut’ Clay, his husband of 40 years. As of June 30, 2014, he has appeared in 2,338 publications.