Call & Response

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_6/Gilson.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

When did you know you were gay?
my boyfriend asks in bed one night.

And I tell him it was at church camp,
age thirteen, when David, the boy

in the top bunk, shook our beds
in what he claimed was a nightmare

sent straight from Lucifer, the fallen
angel himself. I know now this living

is neither dream nor terror. But also,
this is all a lie-it was earlier, age six,

when my mother and I drove away
in the night. Near dawn we rested

at a truck stop, where she cried,
ordered us ice cream and Diet Coke.

Where she pleaded with me-promise me
you will never trust a man. Never.