Roman Johnson

Be Thou My Vision

When I was eight, my father kept his car running while the gas exhaust fumes filled the air of my cousin’s apartment complex. He was getting banged out by another man, my uncle said, laughing to my father, in disgust. Men should not lie with men, they’d say. But at Christmas, among the men in my family, he was the happiest. When he spoke, he couldn’t help but emit a smile. He was funny that way some of the men said. Others said ain’t no sissy was going to be around their son. No, they can’t have a son like that. Too many men have dreamed a world that cannot materialize because they don’t carry the seeds of destiny. My cousin would take every child and pick them up and whisper to them how much god loved them. How did God love my cousin? He’s dead now of the thing they whisper. But I said he lived in love and died there, too. Be still my vision. Take me to heaven where the sun shines, where my cousin is laughing and hopefully being reborn in another man’s hands.

Roman Johnson, PhD is a writer and scientist from Memphis, TN. He is a second–year MFA student in poetry at Brown University and the winner of the Clark Atlanta Poetry Prize and the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press. He is a 2025 Lambda Literary Workshop Fellow in Fiction and has received numerous other fellowships and residencies from institutions like Linda Hall Library, Breadloaf, Tin House, and Knoll Farm. His writing is found, or forthcoming, in publications such American Literary Review, Obsidian, African Voices, and elsewhere.