"As someone who had been forced to go to church three or four times a week for long services, I often longed to be out in the creeks and hills instead of stuck within four walls, listening to a preacher as he beat the Bible and strutted the aisles like a bantam rooster. This poem validated the way I felt when I was in the woods or wading in the creek. The God of My Understanding was best found in the natural world, not chapels or cathedrals."

#poetry #resistance #religion #LGBTQ
/2

Then there's Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" with its opening, “You do not have to be good”:

"In the religious sect of my childhood, I was constantly exposed to relentless bigotry: sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia—if there was discrimination to be had, it was ripe in that pulpit. Although I knew I was gay and that I had tried to pray that away for years, that congregation had drilled into my subconscious that because of who I was, I was not good."

#poetry #religion #LGBTQ
/3

"A lie repeated is a powerful thing. It can take up residence in us so thickly that we sometimes cannot escape. But the first time I read 'Wild Geese,' I was handed a hammer to break down those walls."

#poetry #resistance #religion #LGBTQ
/4

"Strutted like a little bantam rooster" is a fine phrase, a very Southern one, I suspect. I heard it all my young years, with "bantam" pronounced as "banty." I'm not sure I could identify a bantam rooster, but I know its strut when I see it in a small man trying to convince the world he's bigger than he is, and Lord knows, there are a lot of those little banties strutting around in American culture now, imagining that we can't see just who they are.

#poetry #resistance #religion #LGBTQ
/5

As someone who raises chickens, bantam roosters are about 1/3 to 1/4 the size of full size roosters. It's a type of breed, not a stage of growth. Bantam or banty chickens are like toy poodles, breed to be small even when full grown.

Bantam roosters have Napoleon complexes. They are far meaner than full size roosters. They not only attack other chickens, they attack human caretakers as well. I will keep bantam hens, but I will not keep bantam roosters. They are nasty little buggers.

It's funny that calling someone "chicken" and calling then "cocky" have opposite meanings yet refer to the same animal