{"id":1446,"date":"2025-09-29T23:57:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T03:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=1446"},"modified":"2025-09-29T23:58:53","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T03:58:53","slug":"sinnerman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2025\/09\/29\/sinnerman\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinnerman"},"content":{"rendered":"

The text that I decided to focus on for my second blog post was another one of Saeed Jones’ poems,\u00a0Boy in a Whalebone Corset<\/em>, because it really stuck out to me as a poem that explores different a different theme than most of his other poems, which is his religious trauma.<\/p>\n

In this poem, Saeed Jones makes a lot of references and allusions to biblical depictions of punishment, focusing specifically on the lines, “he’s in the field, gasoline jug, \/ hand full of matches, night made \/ of locusts, column of smoke \/ mistaken for Old Testament God.” (Jones 12) These allusions make me think of how homophobia is treated in religious contexts, and how faith can be used as an excuse for bigotry and abuse. Locusts represent coming punishment, as mentioned in the second line of the poem, and Old Testament God represents wrath, for example the wrath brought down when destroying the also referenced city of Sodom for the sin of homosexuality.<\/p>\n

Another thing to focus on is the Nina Simone record playing in the background, and the lines “And the record skips \/ and skips and skips.” (Jones 12) I think the record skipping symbolizes something very important, which is that this event seriously traumatized him, to the point at which it is stuck in his mind repeating over and over again, like a broken record.<\/p>\n

The reason I wanted to analyze this poem is because it is a very common experience in the LGBTQ community to suffer from abuse from a religious standpoint. Being told that what you are is wrong and that you will face eternal damnation just for being yourself is exactly what happens in this poem when Saeed Jones, exploring his gender, puts on a corset and his father catches him. Not only does the fire his father sets leave scars on his memory, hence the skipping record, but is also an attempt at purification since fire is used in the Bible as a metaphor for cleansing of sins and the father views his son as corrupted by homosexuality, needing to be purified in the eyes of the Lord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The text that I decided to focus on for my second blog post was another one of Saeed Jones’ poems,\u00a0Boy in a Whalebone Corset, because it really stuck out to me as a poem that explores different a different theme than most of his other poems, which is his religious trauma. In this poem, Saeed … Continue reading Sinnerman<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5711,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5711"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1446"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1457,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446\/revisions\/1457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}