Kenneth Pobo is retired from teaching, but before teaching he worked as a houseboy, a busboy, and a telephone solicitor (the annoying guy who calls at dinnertime—it was so dreary that he told people he was Neil Diamond calling them).

WHILE DRIVING TO WORK

by Kenneth Pobo

In the car “Could It Be Forever”
by David Cassidy came on,
a 1972 hit, and that’s when
the only being I told
I was gay to was God. My prayers
were please help me be
sexually drawn to women. OK,
I didn’t say sexually. I said
romantically. This was God.
I felt I had to be polite,
at least discreet, figuring
that God would get it anyway. 

I wondered about forever love.
The Beatles sang all
I needed was love. Why
was I fenced out? Until,
five years later when I
quit asking God to help,
kicked down the fence,
turned pickets into firewood,
and sat by the blaze.

Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press) and Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers). His work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Amsterdam Quarterly, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.