Original sin

by James W. Gaynor

Outside on the playground
Eisenhower was president
and the seven-year-olds compared sins
getting ready for our first confession
although transgressions tended
towards the venal.




Outside on the playground
I decided on a different approach
and in the dark booth confessed
to having committed adultery
knowing only that it sounded grown-up
and happened at cocktail parties.




Outside on the playground
I was a hero
having received serious penance
for lying in my First Confession and
spent considerable time in theory praying
but in truth looking forward to adultery.

AUTHOR
James W. Gaynor been writing poetry since I was 12 — somehow, still here, post- Stonewall, the Vietnam war and the AIDS epidemic, and still writing. And still examining what it means to observe, to record his experience of the world from his evolving, now 70-year-old, queer perspective. He's the author of Everything Becomes a Poem and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 61 Haiku.