Elaine de Kooning, James and Scott Deakins, 1971

Someone left a book on my grandparents’ doorstep:

How to Deal with Your Gay Son. Some bitch

took it upon herself to ascribe meaning. Crystal barware

prismed the spring light. The Sound of Music growing dust

in the cabinet. The footbridge in the grass alleyway,

the moss. The green moss, the doggy smell of the fur-green

moss, better than a baby. In Elaine’s portrait, my uncle

was a boy, his father’s phantom fist gaveling his shoulder.

He was made of white and red palette knife strokes.

He was always happening. A kind of fear in his eyes,

or hunger. When my uncle came out to me, I said

I know. I was eleven. Creation over destruction. I knew.

At Marvin Methodist Church, I held out my tongue

and a potato sack man put a wafer there. The azalea trail

screamed pink down the cobblestone streets. My uncle

showed me all his hiding places. We became them.