Dovecote
Robin Gow
Rainbow Underwear
I’m not sure what the link between my underwear and God’s promise to not flood the earth again should be. I imagine dozens of my underwear falling from the sky. On Noah’s Ark all the animals and Noah and his family would put on the rainbow underwear and thank God for his promises. Collectively his ship was the first homosexual cruise. (My Facebook ads tell me there are now at least several cruises of that sort). In Spanish “Rainbow” is arco iris which means Arc of Iris—the Greek Goddess sending messages between our world and the Gods. I imagine Iris making underwear, sewing them from beams of prism light. She doesn’t know what significance the colors might have to humans but she knows that she has to make them and that she has to work before the clouds suck all the color out with their gray. Laying on my bed in only my rainbow underwear I see more pairs falling outside the window. In the yard I collection them, folding them neat in my drawer. Sometimes I have a dick but not always— sometimes it gets lost in the beams of color. I want to love the small tunnels of myself—I want quiet genitals that ask for nothing but light. I want to wear rainbow underwear everyday and come home to my room where I can take off whatever skin I’ve made and lay in patterns of color. I want a bouquet of hues, a bundle of daze, all my garments to give into a rainbow and I don’t want to know what the Gods are saying.










Robin Gow’s poetry has recently been published in POETRY, The Gateway Review, and tilde. He is a graduate student and adjunct professor at Adelphi University pursing an MFA in Creative Writing. He is the Editor at Large for Village of Crickets and Social Media Coordinator for Oyster River Pages. He is an out and proud bisexual transgender man passionate about LGBT issues.