Yoknapatawpha Boyfriend

Yoknapatawpha Boyfriend
__________________

“I didn’t want to
end up like Ellison.”
—E. Ethelbert Miller,
The 5th Inning

This poem—
Is dedicated to
Thucydus—
Half-brother of
Lucius Quintus
Carothers McCaslin

What spendthrift—
Olympic ejaculation
Created the day—
Graceless seraphim
Rapaciously trampling
Satyr’s goat-hoofs
_____________________

Ahmos ZuBolton—
And I were both
In Baton Rouge—
We were going
To Louisiana
State University

He was from—
Mississippi one
Of the first—
Young blacks
Admitted after
Desegregation

ZuBolton was—
An English major
And already one—
One of the Editors
Of the Delta Journal
There at LSU

He was a leader—
Of the Black Arts
Movement soon—
With many books,
Readings, poems &
Black fellow poets

A prolific DC poet—
Then down to the
Big Easy where he—
Taught, published,
Owned and ran the
Copasetic Bookstore
__________

ZuBolton published—
My first poem in the
Delta and then he—
He was drafted to
Fight in Viet Nam
Like many others

I checked the Box—
The beginning of
My commitment to—
The nascent gay arts
Movement running
Parallel to ZuBolton

Black lib and poetry—
Both got me to publish
“Chicken” (Gay Sunshine
Press, 1979) moldering
Decadently down there
In the LSU Library
____________________

Parallel poets and—
Parallel lives running
Prowling cattily like—
Shadowy synchronistic
Lucius and Thucydus
In Delta Bourbon time