Quilting Bee
—for Derrell Cole
Poetry
by Christopher Thomas

Because we saw you walk
so many streets of hell,
we spun the thing from what
you taught us about heaven.
We sewed great air balloons

to the hem of the garment,
flooded the thing with tiny
hearts, sequins, feathers
of the Cherokee, portraits
of Miss Piggy, the white dog

we never told about your death,
and the one of you at the beach
the year you caught the marlin
and the plague. And knowing
how you loved men bronzed

to the buff, we chose a cloth
of warm and willing tan.
We were grief-stricken quilters
threading our way through
your life. We selected things

that named you and tried our
best to celebrate the light,
though each of us knew
it was darkness that brought
us unwillingly to the task.

Christopher Thomas has been publishing poems in gay/lesbian and mainstream reviews for many years. His work has appeared in Amelia, Bay Windows, Chiron Review, Duckabush Review, Evergreen Chronicles, The James White Review, New York Native, Paramour Magazine, and others. Some of his work has been anthologized. Lone Willow Press will publish his collection, The Smell of Carnal Knowledge, in early 2007.

October 2006