Con-spic-u-ous

by Scott Owens

my father would say.
Try not to be so God-damned
con-spic-u-ous
when we’d go out together
anywhere we might be seen by others,
meaning even though he thought I might be gay
he didn’t want the rest of the world to know
it was a possibility,
meaning, Take off that damned pink shirt,
meaning, Don’t stand like that, one hip
thrust to the side, arms across my chest,
meaning, Would it hurt to put your hair
up under a cap now and then,
meaning, Get your nose out of those
God-damned books for a while,
meaning, Forget all those daydreaming
bleeding heart liberal ideas
that don’t have anything to do
with the real world,
meaning, At least talk in a deeper voice
if you have to say anything at all,
meaning, And for God’s sake don’t tell anybody
you write poetry.

When he first asked, when I was 15,
I thought long and hard
before refusing to answer,
asking, instead, why it should matter.

And it ate him up for the next 3 years,
not knowing. Not that it was always easy,
convincing my mother not to say anything,
keeping my girlfriends away
from the house when he was there.

But it was worth it,
keeping him off balance,
unsure if he could dismiss
a whole group of people
without condemning his own son,
making his discomfort
the most conspicuous thing about him.