You Come When I Call You

I was very trusting and very dangerous

the night Committee Members arrived.

Something that smelled like wet dog wrapped my eyes.

Sleeping naked, I was permitted to dress,

as someone explained how by white- and black-

ball election I was last among their choices.

At first, the friendly timbre of the voices

comforted me … until I was prodded like an ass

into a truck (or like the missing child Jed,

I remember thinking, whose face appeared

on my milk carton), where I could hear

others, like me, breathing prostrate on the flatbed

and the zealous talk of Brotherhood

at their seats in the cab. Drinking from flasks,

they jeered at us in our doggy masks.

Though we could not see, how we understood!

They steered us to a lake in the Commonwealth,

and, speaking in a language designated

by little Greek letters, revealed themselves

as a court for the uninitiated.

A man must make do the best he can

in a world where goodness is stamped out:

this much I resolved that humid morning South,

as I drank, kneeling like a broken man,

from a sulfur spring with other Pledges,

then pressed my lips in adoration to pages

of a book held before me. “A French kiss!

She’s giving it the tongue!” the Chairman hissed.

Then suddenly the proceedings ended.

My wrists and red eyes untied, I was asked

to sing songs the Little Sisters, steadfast

behind their Brothers, belted out. Legends

of Reconstruction teach us a few good things.

About pride, for instance, and how a ruined

land with hospitals and barracks was soon

our little college. Yet in that lamentable

fraternal Gamma code I found not one

natural Brother, only niggling dues to be paid,

committees, like dogs paraded

on leashes, straining toward women,

immolation of spirit, a berated

God, nobility worn like a harness,

a sour apple in the heart, and this,

this was the congenial state I’d awaited.