Unto These Men Do Nothing

we all returned to ancient Sodom
did heed its brimstone beacon
time after all just a construct
my brothers and I agreed to keep
ticking away
and were greeted at the gate
with wine and whores and sand
and Lot came by with men
we already knew were angels
and they looked upon
my sweet cousin Jamie
who even back then they knew
would in 2009 be murdered
and stuffed into a plastic box
in some suburb of Louisville
when he fled the closeness
of creeks and hollers and hills
for some form of sodomite freedom
and the angels said unto us we are sorry
for what you have all been through
cause that’s not what this story is about
but we had already been through
what we had already been through
because of what this story would be
and we joined the angry mob
and called out with them to Lot
to bring down the men that we might know them
that they might speak to the fullness of blazing ruins
whose smoke rises beyond time like a cracked furnace
and Lot stood at his door, already drunk, and said,
No, my friends. Do not do this wicked thing!
but weary of being clutched between verses
we named this a time for gathering stones
and cast them til thunder shook the earth with ink

Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. is an advocate, a Kentucky Teacher of the Year, and the author of a bestselling collection of narrative poetry about his childhood growing up queer in Appalachia, Gay Poems for Red States (University Press of Kentucky), which was named a Book Riot Best Book of 2023, a Top Ten Best Book of Appalachia by Read Appalachia, an IndieBound and American Bookseller’s Association’s must-have book, a 2023 Top Ten Over-The-Rainbow book by the American Library Association, and, most recently, was awarded a 2024 Stonewall Book Award – Barbara Gittings Literature Honor Book Award. Carver’s work exists at the intersection of queer identity, Appalachian identity, and the politics of innocence.